# The Poverty of Philosophy/Chapter 1/Section 2

Section II.—Constituted or Synthetic Value.
"Value (saleable) is the corner-stone of the economic edifice." "Constituted" value is the corner-stone of the system of economic contradictions.
What then, is this "constituted value" which constitutes all M. Proudhon's discovery in political economy?
Utility being admitted, labor is the source of value. The measure of labor is time. The relative value of products is determined by the labor time it is necessary ​to employ in order to produce them. Price is the monetary expression of the relative value of a product. Finally the constituted value of a product is simply the value which is constituted by the labor time embodied in it.
Just as Adam Smith discovered the division of labor, in the same way M. Proudhon claims to have discovered "constituted value." This is not precisely "something unheard of," but then it must also be admitted that there is nothing unheard of in any discovery in economic science. M. Proudhon, who feels all the importance of his discovery, nevertheless seeks to attenuate its merit, "in order to reassure the reader with regard to his pretensions to originality and to conciliate those whose timidity rendes them but little favorable to new ideas." But, while admitting that each of his predecessors has done something for the appreciation of value, he is compelled to loudly proclaim that it is to him that the greater part, the lion's share, belongs.
"The synthetical idea of value was vaguely perceived by Adam Smith.. . . But this idea of value was entirely intuitive with Adam Smith; nevertheless, society does not change its habits on the faith of intuitions, it decides only on the authority of facts. It is necessary that the contradiction should be expressed in a clearer and more sensible manner. J. B. Say was its principal exponent."
There is the whole history of the discovery of synthetical value—to Adam Smith vague intuition, to J. B. Say contradiction, to M. Proudhon the constituent and "constituted" truth. And let there be no mistake; all the other economists, from Say to Proudhon, have done nothing but wander in the beaten path of contradiction.
"It is incredible that so many men of sense should for forty years have struggled against such a simple idea. ​But no, the comparison of values is effected without there being any point of comparison between them and without unity of measure:—that is what the economists of the nineteenth century, rather than embrace the revolutionary theory of equality, have resolved to maintain towards and against all. What will posterity say about it?" (Vol. I., p. 68.)
Posterity, so brusquely apostrophised, will commence by being puzzled about this chronology. It must necessarily ask: But were not Ricardo and his school economists of the nineteenth century? The system of Ricardo, which set forth the principle "that the relative value of commodities depends exclusively on the quantity of labor required for their production," appeared in 1817. Ricardo is the chief of a whole school which reigned in England since the Restoration. The Ricardian theory sums up, rigorously, pitilessly, all the doctrine of the English middle class, itself the type of the modern bourgeoisie.
"What will posterity say about it?" It will not say that M. Proudhon did not know Ricardo, because he speaks of him, deals with his theory at considerable length, returns to it constantly, and ends by saying that it is rubbish. If ever posterity concerns itself with the subject, it will say, perhaps, that M. Proudhon, fearing to shock the anglophobia of his readers, has preferred to make himself the editor responsible for the ideas of Ricardo. However that may be, it will find it very curious that M. Proudhon gave as a "revolutionary theory of the future" that which Ricardo had scientifically explained as the theory of existing society, of bourgeois society, and that he thus took for the solution of the contradiction between utility and exchange-value what Ricardo and his school had, a long time before him, pre​sented as the scientific formula of a single side of that contradiction of exchange-value. But let us put posterity altogether on one side and confront M. Proudhon with his predecessor Ricardo. Here are some passages from that author which sum up his theory of value.
"It is not utility which is the measure of exchange-value although that quality is absolutely necessary." (Vol. I., p. 3, "Principles of Political Economy.")
"Things, once they are recognised as useful in themselves, draw their exchange-value from two sources: from their scarcity and from the quantity of labor necessary to acquire them. There are some things the value of which depends only on their scarcity. No amount of labor being capable of increasing their quantity, their value cannot fall through their too great abundance. Such are rare statues, pictures, &c. This value depends solely on the faculties, the tastes and the caprice of those desirous of possessing such objects." (Vol. I., pp. 4 and 5.) "These, however, form but a very small part of the commodities which are constantly exchanged. The greater number of desirable objects being the fruit of industry, they can be multiplied, not only in one country, but in many, to an extent to which it is almost impossible to fix any limits, every time that one is willing to employ the industry necessary to create them." (Vol. I., p. 5.) "When, then, we speak of commodities, of their exchange-value, and of the principles which regulate their relative price, we have in view only those commodities the quantity of which can be increased by the industry of man, the production of which is encouraged by competition, and is not prevented by any obstacle." (Vol. I., p. 5)
Ricardo quotes Adam Smith, who, according to him, "has defined with great precision the primitive source ​of all exchange-value" (Vol. I., ch. 5 of Smith), and he adds: "That such must in reality be the basis of exchange-value of all things (namely, labor time) except those which the industry of man cannot multiply at will, is a doctrinal point of the highest importance in political economy; for there is no source from which have flowed so many errors, and out of which have sprung so many diverse opinions in this science as from the vague and indefinite sense attached to the word value." (Vol. I., p. 8.)
"If it is the quantity of labor embodied in an article which regulates its exchange-value, it follows that every increase in the quantity of labor must necessarily increase the value of the object upon which it has been employed, in the same way every reduction in the amount of labor must bring about a reduction in price." (Vol I., p. 9.)
Ricardo afterwards reproaches Smith:
(1) "With having given to value a measure other than labor, sometimes the value of wheat, sometimes the quantity of labor which an article would purchase, &c." (Vol. I., pp. 9 and 10.)
(2) "With having admitted the principle without reserve, and to have, nevertheless, restricted its application to the rude and primitive state of society which preceded the accumulation of capital and the ownership of land." (Vol. I., p. 21.)
Ricardo devotes himself to demonstrating that the ownership of land, that is to say rent, cannot change the relative value of commodities, and that the accumulation of capital exercises only a passing and oscillating influence on the relative values determined by the comparative quantity of labor employed in their production. In support of this proposition he formulates his famous ​theory of rent, decomposes capital and comes, in the final analysis, to find that there is nothing but accumulated labor. He afterwards develops a whole theory of wages and profit, and demonstrates that wages and profit rise and fall in inverse ratio the one to the other, without influencing the relative value of the product. He does not ignore the influence which the accumulation of capitals and the difference in their nature (fixed capital and circulating capital), as well as the rate of wages, may exercise on the proportional value of the products. There are, indeed, the principal problems which occupy Ricardo.
"Every economy of labor," says he, "never fails to reduce the relative value of a commodity, whether this economy be effected in the labor necessary to the manufacture of the article itself or in the labor necessary to the formation of the capital employed in that manufacure." (Vol. I., p. 48.) "In consequence, while a day's labor continues to give to one the same quantity of fish and to the other the same of game, the natural rate of the respective prices of exchange will remain the same, whatever may, otherwise, be the variation in wages and in profit, and in spite of all the effects of the accumulation of capital." (Vol. I., p. 32.) "We have regarded labor as the foundation of the value of things, and the quantity of labor necessary to their production as the law which determines the respective quantities of commodities which must be given in exchange for others; but we have not pretended to deny that there may be in the current prices of commodities some accidental and passing deviation from this primitive and natural price." (Vol. I., p. 105). "It is the cost of production which regulates, in the last analysis, the price of things ​and not, as has often been advanced, the proportion between supply and demand." (Vol. II., p. 253.)
Lord Lauderdale had developed the variations of exchange-value according to the law of supply and demand, or of scarcity and abundance relatively to demand. According to him the value of a thing would increase when its quantity diminished or demand increased; it would diminish in proportion to the increase of its quantity or to the reduction of demand. Thus the value of anything might change by the operation of eight different causes, namely, four causes appertaining to the thing itself, and four causes appertaining to money or any other commodity which served as measure of its value. Here is Ricardo's refutation:
"The products of which an individual or a company has the monopoly vary in value according to the law which Lord Lauderdale has postulated: they fall in proportion as they are supplied in greater quantity, and they rise with the desire of purchasers to acquire them; their price has no necessary relation to their natural value. But as to the things which are subject to competition between the sellers, and of which the quantity can be increased within reasonable limits, their price depends definitely not upon the state of demand and of supply, but upon the actual cost of production." (Vol. II., p. 159.)
We will leave the reader to compare the precise, clear, and simple language of Ricardo with the rhetorical efforts made by M. Proudhon in order to arrive at the determination of relative value by labor time.
Ricardo shows us the real movement of bourgeois production which constitutes value. M. Proudhon, making abstraction of this movement, "struggles" to invent new processes in order to regulate the world ​according to a professedly new formula which is only the theoretical expression of the real existing movement so well expounded by Ricardo. Ricardo takes for his point of departure existing society to demonstrate to us how it constitutes value. M. Proudhon takes for his point of departure constituted value, in order to constitute a new social world by means of this value. For him, M. Proudhon, constituted value must make a circuit and become the constituent for a world already fully constituted according to this mode of valuation. The determination of value by labor time is for Ricardo the law of exchange-value; for M. Proudhon it is the synthesis of use-value and exchange-value. The theory of value of Ricardo is the scientific interpretation of actual economic life; the theory of value of M. Proudhon is the utopian interpretation of the theory of Riacrdo. Ricardo proves the truth of his formula by drawing his conclusions from all the economic relations and in explaining by this means all the phenomena, even those which at first sight appear to contradict it, such as rent, the accumulation of capitals, and the connection between wages and profits; that is precisely what makes of his theory a scientific system. M. Proudhon, who has rediscovered this formula of Ricardo's by means of entirely arbitrary hypotheses, is compelled afterwards to seek for isolated economic facts which he tortures and falsifies, in order to make them serve as examples, applications already existing, of the beginnings of the realisation of his regenerating idea. (See our Section 3, "Application of Constituted Value.")
Let us now pass on to the conclusions which M. Proudhon draws from value constituted (by labor time).
― A given quantity of labor equals the product created by the same quantity of labor.
​― Every day's labor is worth another day's labor; that is to say, in equal quantity the labor of one is worth the labor of another: there is no qualitative difference. Given an equal quantity of labor, the product of one will exchange for the product of another. All men are wage-workers, and equal wages pay for an equal time of labor. Perfect equality presides over the exchange.
Are these conclusions the natural, rigorous consequences of value "constituted," or determined, by labor time?
If the relative value of a commodity is determined by the quantity of labor required to produce it, it naturally follows that the relative value of labor, or wages, must be equally determined by the quantity of labor which is necessary to produce the wages. The wage, that is to say the relative value, or price, of labor, is then determined by the labor-time which is necessary to produce all that is required for the subsistence of the worker. "Reduce the cost of manufacturing hats and eventually their price will fall to their new natural price, although the demand may be doubled, trebled, or quadrupled. Reduce the cost of subsistence of men by reducing the natural price of the necessary food and clothing and you will see wages eventually fall, although the demand for hands may have considerably increased." (Ricardo, vol. II., p. 253.)
Certainly the language of Ricardo is most cynical. To put in the same category the cost of manufacturing hats and the cost of subsistence of man, is to transform man into a hat. The cynicism is in the things themselves, and not in the words which express these things. Some French writers, such as MM. Droz, Blanqui, Rossi and others, give themselves the innocent satisfaction of proving their superiority to the English economists by ​seeking to observe the etiquette of "humanitarian" language; if they reproach Ricardo and his school with their cynical language, it is because they are annoyed at seeing economic conditions exposed in all their crudity, at seeing the mysteries of the bourgeoisie betrayed.
Let us sum up: Labor being itself a commodity, measures itself as such by the labor-time necessary to produce this labor-commodity. And what is necessary to produce the labor-commodity? Exactly that amount of labor time which is necessary to produce the objects indispensable to the constant subsistence of labor; that is to say, to enable the workers to live and to propagate his race. The natural price of labor is nothing but the minimum wage. If the current price of wages rises above the natural price it is precisely because the law of value, postulated in principle by M. Proudhon, finds itself counterbalanced by the consequences of the variations in the relation between supply and demand. But the minimum wage is, nevertheless, the centre towards which the current price of wages constantly gravitates.
Thus relative value, measured by labor-time, is fatally the formula of the modern slavery of the worker, instead of being, as M. Proudhon would have it, the "revolutionary theory" of the emancipation of the proletariat.
Let us now see in how many cases the application of labor time as the measure of value is incompatible with the existing antagonism of classes and the unequal distribution of the product between the immediate worker and the possessor of accumulated labor.
Let us suppose a certain product: for instance, linen. This product, as such, embodies a definite quantity of labor. This quantity of labor will be the same no ​matter what may be the reciprocal positions of those whose labor has combined to create this product.
Let us take another product (cloth) which has exacted the same quantity of labor as the linen.
If there is an exchange of these products there is an exchange of equal quantities of labor. In exchanging these equal quantities of labor, we do not change the reciprocal position of the producers any more than we change something in the situation of the workers and manufacturers among them. To say that this exchange of products measured by time has, for its consequence, the equal remuneration of all the producers, is to suppose that equality of participation has existed anterior to the exchange. When the exchange of the cloth for the linen has been accomplished, the producers of the cloth will share in the linen in precisely the same proportions as they before shared in the cloth.
The illusion of M. Proudhon proceeds from his taking as a necessary consequence what at the most can be nothing but a gratuitous assumption.
Let us go further.
Does labor time, as the measure of value, suppose at least that the days are equivalent, and that the day of one is worth the day of another? No.
Assuming, for a moment, that the day of a jeweler is worth three days of a weaver, all changes in the value of jewels relatively to the value of woven stuffs must always, apart from the passing effects of the oscillation of supply and demand, have for cause a reduction or an increase on one side or the other of the time employed in production. Let three days of labor of different workers be in the proportion of 1, 2, 3 and all change in the relative value of their products will be a change in this proportion of 1, 2, 3. Thus ​value may be measured by labor time in spite of the inequality of value of different days of labor; but, to apply a similar measure it is necessary for us to have a comparative scale of the different days of labor; it is competition which establishes this scale.
Is your hour of labor equal to mine? That is a question debated and settled by competition.
Competition, according to an American economist, determines how many days of simple labor are contained in a day of complex labor. Does not this reduction of days of complex labor to days of simple labor suppose that simple labor is itself taken as the measure of value? The single quantity of labor serving as the measure of value supposes in its turn that simple labor has become the pivot of industry. It supposes that labors are equalised by the subordination of man to the machine, or by the extreme division of labor; that men are effaced before labor; that the balance of the pendulum has become the exact measure of the relative activity of two workers as it is of the speed of two locomotives. Then it is not necessary to say that the hour of one man is worth the hour of another man, but rather that a man of one hour is worth another man of an hour. Time is everything, man is nothing; he is no more than the carcase of time. There is no more question of quality. Quantity alone decides everything, hour for hour, day for day: but this equalisation of labor is not the work of M. Proudhon's "eternal justice"; it is solely the accomplishment of modern industry.
In the automatic workshop the labor of one worker is scarcely distinguished in anything from the labor of another worker: the workers cannot distinguish between themselves except by the quantity of time they work. Nevertheless, this quantitative difference becomes, at a ​certain point of view, qualitative, inasmuch as the time given to work depends, in part, on purely material causes, such as physical constitution, age, and sex; in part on purely negative moral qualities, such as patience, impassability, assiduity. Lastly, if there is a difference of quality in the labor of the workers it is at most a degree of the last quality, which is far from being a distinctive speciality. Such is, in the final analysis, the state of things in modern industry. It is on this already realised equality of automatic labor that M. Proudhon bases his plane of "equalisation" which he proposes to realise universally in "the time to come."
All the "equalitarian" consequences which M. Proudhon draws from the doctrine of Ricardo rest upon a fundamental error. That is, that he confounds the value of commodities measured by the quantity of labor embodied in them with the value of commodities measured by "the value of labor." If these two methods of measuring the value of commodities were confounded in one, we might say indifferently, the relative value of any commodity is measured by the quantity of value embodied in it; or, it is measured by the quantity of labor which it is able to purchase; or, again, it is measured by the quantity of labor which will purchase it. It is necessary, indeed, that it should be thus. The value of labor could no more serve as a measure of value than the value of any other commodity. Some examples will serve to more fully explain the above point.
If a quarter of wheat cost two days' labor instead of one, it would have double its primitive value; but it would not put in motion a double quantity of labor, because it would contain no more nutritive matter than before. Thus the value of the wheat, measured by the quantity of labor employed to produce it, would have ​doubled; but measured either by the quantity of labor that it could buy, or by the quantity of labor by which it could be bought, it would be far from having doubled. On the other hand, if the same labor produced double the amount of clothing as before, the relative value would fall to one half; but nevertheless this double quantity of clothing will not thereby be reduced to command only half the quantity of labor, nor could the same quantity of labor command double the quantity of clothing, as the half of the clothing would continue to render to the workers the same service as before.
Thus, to determine the relative value of commodities by the value of labor is contrary to economic facts. It is to move in a vicious circle, to determine relative value by a relative value which, in its turn, needs to be determined.
It is beyond doubt that M. Proudhon confounds the two measures, the measure by the labor-time necessary to the production of a commodity, and the measure by the value of the labor. "The labor of every man," says he, "will purchase the labor which it embodies." Thus, according to him, a certain quantity of labor embodied in a product equals in value the remuneration of the worker, that is to say, the value of labor. It is, once more, the same reason which leads him to confound the cost of production with wages.
"What are wages? They are the price of the amount of wheat, &c., . . . . the integral price of all things." Let us go further still: "Wages are the proportionality of the elements which compose wealth!" What are wages? They are the value of labor.
Adam Smith takes as measures of value, sometimes the labor time necessary to the production of a commodity, sometimes the value of labor. Ricardo exposed ​this error by showing clearly the disparity between these two methods of measuring. M. Proudhon enhances the error of Adam Smith by identifying the two things which the latter had only placed in juxtaposition.
It is in order to find the just proportion in which the workers should share in the products, or in other terms, to determine the relative value of labor, that M. Proudhon seeks for a measure of the relative values of commodities. To determine the measure of the relative value of commodities he can think of nothing better than of giving as the equivalent of a certain quantity of labor the sum of the products that it has created, which amounts to supposing that the whole of society consists solely of direct workers receiving for wages their own produce. In the second place, he sets forth as a fact the equality of the days of different workers. To sum up, he seeks the measure of the relative value of commodities in order to discover the equal remuneration of the workers, and he assumes, as an already established fact, equality of wages in order to discover the relative value of commodities. What admirable dialectic!
"Say and the economists who have followed him have observed that labor being itself subject to valuation, a commodity like any other, in fact, to take it for a principle and the efficient cause of value would be to move in a vicious circle. These economists, if they will permit me to say so, have shown by that a prodigious inattention. Labor is called value, not as being a commodity itself, but in view of the values supposed to be potentially embodied in it. The value of labor is a figurative expression, an anticipation of the cause and the effect. It is a fiction of the same kind as the productivity of capital. Labor produces, capital denotes value.. . . . Labor, like liberty, is a vague and indefinite ​thing by nature, but it becomes qualitatively defined by its object; that is to say, it becomes a reality by its product.
"But what need to insist? When the economist (read M. Proudhon) changes the name of things, vera rerum vocabula, he implicitly avows his impotence and puts himself out of court." (Proudhon I., 188.)
We have seen that M. Proudhon makes of the value of labor "the efficient cause" of the value of products to the extent that for him wages, the official name of the "value of labor," form the integral price of everything. That is why the objection of Say troubles him. In labor commodity, which is a frightful reality, he sees nothing but a grammatical ellipsis. The whole of existing society, then, based upon labor commodity, is henceforth based upon a poetic licence, on a figurative expression.
Does society desire to "eliminate all the inconveniences" which trouble it, it has only to eliminate all the ill-sounding terms. Let it change the language, and for that it has only to address itself to the Academy and ask it for a new edition of its dictionary. After all that we have seen, it is easy to understand why M. Proudhon, in a work on political economy, has had to enter into long dissertations on etymology and other parts of grammar. Thus, he has still to gravely discuss servus a servare. These philological dissertations have a profound meaning, an esoteric meaning; they form an essential part of the argument of M. Proudhon.
Labor, labor force, inasmuch as it is bought and sold, is a commodity the same as any other commodity, and has consequently an exchange-value. But the value of labor, or labor, as a commodity, does not produce, any more than the value of wheat, or wheat, as a commotity, serves for nourishment.
​Labor "is worth" more or less, according as alimentary commodities are more or less dear, according as the supply and demand of "hands" exists in such or such a degree, &c., &c.
Labor is not a "vague thing"; it is always definitely determined labor, never labor in general, which is bought and sold. It is not only the labor which is qualitatively defined by the object, but it is also the object which is determined by the specific quality of the labor.
Labor, in so far as it is bought and sold, is itself a commodity. Why is it purchased? "In view of the values supposed to be potentially embodied in it." But if we say that a certain thing is a commodity there is no question of the object for which we buy it, it is simply for the service we intend to derive from it; the application which we shall make of it. It is a commodity as object of traffic. All the reasonings of M. Proudhon confine themselves to this: We do not purchase labor as an object of immediate consumption. No, we buy it as an instrument of production, as we would buy a machine. Merely as a commodity labor is worth nothing and produces nothing. M. Proudhon might just as well have said that there are no commodities in existence at all, seeing that every commodity is only acquired for some use and never merely as a commodity.
In measuring the value of commodities by labor M. Proudhon vaguely perceives the impossibility of expressing labor by this same measure, in so far as it has a value, labor commodity. He has a misgiving that it is to make of the minimum wage the natural and normal price of direct labor, that it is to accept the existing state of society. So, to escape from this fatal consequence he performs a volte-face and pretends that labor is not a commodity, that it could not have a value. He forgets ​that he has himself taken labor value for a measure. He forgets that his whole system rests on the labor commodity, on labor which is trafficked, bought and sold, exchanged for products, &c.; on the labor, in fine, which is an immediate source of revenue for the worker. He forgets all.
In order to save his system he consents to sacrifice its basis.
Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas!
We now arrive at a new definition of "constituted value."
"Value is the relation of the proportion of the products which compose wealth."
First of all let us remark that the simple expression "relative or exchangeable value' implies the idea of some sort of relation, in which the products exchange reciprocally. By giving to this relation the name of "relation of proportion" we change nothing of the relative value, except the expression. Neither the depreciation nor the enhancement of the value of a product destroys the quality which it possesses of finding itself in a "relation of proportion" of some kind with the other products which form wealth.
Why, then, this new term, which conveys no new idea?
The "relation of proportion" makes one think of many other economic relations, such as the proportion of production, the just proportion between supply and demand, &c.; and M. Proudhon has thought of all that in formulating this didactic paraphrase of saleable values.
In the first place, the relative value of products being determined by the comparative quantity of labor employed in the production of each of them, the relation ​of the proportion, applied to this special use, signifies the respective quota of products which can be manufactured in a given time, and which, consequently, would be given in exchange.
Let us see what advantage M. Proudhon draws from this relation of proportion. Everybody knows that when supply and demand are equal the relative value of any product whatever is exactly determined by the quantity of labor embodied in it—that is to say, that this relative value expresses the relation of the proportion precisely in the sense in which we have just given it. M. Proudhon reverses the order of things. Begin, says he, by measuring the relative value of a product by the quantity of labor embodied in it, and then supply and demand will infallibly equalise themselves. Production will correspond with consumption; the product will be always exchangeable. Its current price will express precisely its exact value. Instead of saying, with everybody else, that when the weather is fine one sees many people out walking, M. Proudhon makes his people walk out in order to ensure fine weather.
What M. Proudhon gives as the consequence of saleable value determined à priori by labor time could only be justified by a law formulated in almost these terms:
Products will henceforth be exchanged in exact ratio to the labor time they have cost. Whatever may be the proportion between supply and demand, the exchange of commodities will be always as if they had been produced proportionately to the demand.
Let M. Proudhon take it on himself to formulate and to make such a law, and we will pass the proofs to him. If he intends on the contrary to justify his theory, not as legislator, but as economist, he will have to prove that the time which is necessary to create a commodity in​dicates exactly its degree of utility, and marks its relation of proportion to the demand and, by consequence, to the total mass of wealth. In this case, if a product is sold at a price equal to its cost of production, supply and demand always equalise themselves; since the cost of production is deemed to express the true relation of supply and demand.
Practically M. Proudhon sets himself to prove that the labor-time necessary to create a product marks its exact proportion to existing wants, in such sort that the things of which the production costs the least time are those things which are the most immediately useful, and so on, gradually. The production of an article of luxury in itself proves, according to this doctrine, that society has sufficient leisure to permit it to satisfy a desire for luxury.
The very proof of his thesis M. Proudhon finds in the observation that the things the most useful cost the least time to produce, that society commences always by the most simple industries, and that it successively "attacks the production of objects which cost more labor time, and which correspond to wants of a higher order."
M. Proudhon borrows from M. Dunoyer the example of extractive industry—gathering wild fruit, pasturage, the chase, fishing, &c.—which represents the most simple form of industry, the least costly, and by which man commenced "the first day of his second creation." The first day of his first creation is enshrined in Genesis, which shows us God as the first industrial of the world.
Things go quite otherwise than as M. Proudhon thinks. From the very moment in which civilisation begins production commences to be based on the antagonism of ​orders, of States, of classes, and finally on the antagonism between accumulated labor and present labor. No antagonism, no progress. That is the law which civilisation has followed down to our day. Up to the present the productive forces have been developed thanks to this régime of the antagonism of classes. To say now that, because all the wants of all the workers were satisfied, men could give themselves up to the creation of products of a superior order, more complicated industries, would be to make abstraction of the antagonism of classes, and to overthrow the whole development of history. It is as if one should say that because, under the Roman emperors, murenas were nourished. in artificial fish-ponds, there was food in abundance for all the population of Rome. But, on the contrary, the Roman people wanted the necessary means to buy bread while the Roman aristocrats had no lack of slaves with which to feed their fishes.
The price of food has almost continually risen, while the price of manufactured articles and luxuries has almost continually fallen. Take the agricultural industry itself: the most indispensable objects, such as wheat, meat, &c., increase in price while cotton, sugar, coffee, &c., fall continually in a surprising fashion. Even among food-stuffs, properly so-called, luxuries, such as artichokes, asparagus, &c., are relatively cheaper to-day than the objects of prime necessity. In our epoch the superfluity is more easily produced than the necessaries of life. Finally, at different historical epochs, the reciprocal relations of price are not only different but opposed. Ali through the Middle Ages agricultural products were. relatively cheaper than manufactured products: in modern times the relations are reversed. ​Has the utility of agricultural products therefore diminished since the Middle Ages?
The use of products is determined by the social conditions in which the consumers are placed, and these conditions themselves rest on the antagonism of classes.
Cotton, potatoes and spirits are the objects of commonest use. Potatoes have engendered scrofula; cotton has largely driven linen and wool out of the market, although wool and linen are in many cases of much greater utility, if only from considerations of hygiene; spirits, again, have largely replaced beer and wine, although spirits, used as food, are generally recognised to be poison. For a whole century Governments vainly struggled against European opinion; economics prevailed, they dictated orders to consumption.
Why, then, are cotton, potatoes and spirits the pivots of bourgeois society? Because the least amount of labor is necessary for their production, and they are in consequence at the lowest price. Why does the minimum of price decide the maximum of consumption? Can it by any chance be because of the absolute utility of these objects, of their intrinsic utility, of their utility in so far as they correspond in the most useful manner to the needs of the worker, as man, and not of the man as worker? No, it is because, in a society based upon poverty, the poorest products have the fatal prerogative of serving the use of the greatest number.
To say now that, because the least costly things are most generally used therefore they must be of the greatest: utility, is to say that the extensive use of spirits because of their low cost of production is the most conclusive proof of their utility; it is to tell the proletariat that the potato is the most salutary meat; it is to accept the existing state of things; it is, in fine, to make, with M. ​Proudhon, the apology for a society without comprehending it.
In a future society, where the antagonism of classes will have ceased, where there will no longer be classes, use will no longer be determined by the minimum time of production; but the time of social production which will be devoted to the various objects will be determined by their degree of social utility.
To return to the thesis of M. Proudhon: From the moment that the labor time necessary to the production of an object is not the expression of its degree of utility, the exchange-value of this object, determined beforehand by the labor time embodied in it, can never regulate the just relation of supply and demand, that is to say, the relation of the proportion in the sense which M. Proudhon for the moment attaches to it.
It is not the sale of any product whatever at the price of its cost of production which constitutes "the relation of proportion" of supply and demand, or the proportional quota of this product relatively to the whole of production; it is the variations of demand and of supply which fix for the producer the quantity in which it is necessary to produce a given product in order to get in exchange at least the cost of production. And as these variations are continued, there is also a continual movement of withdrawal and of application of capitals with regard to the different branches of industry.
"It is only by reason of similar variations that capitals are devoted precisely in the required proportion, and not beyond, to the production of the different commodities for which there is a demand. By the rise or fall of prices profits rise above or fall below their mean level, and by that capital is attracted to or repelled from the ​particular employment which experiences the one or the other of these variations."
"If we cast our eyes over the markets of large towns we shall see with what regularity they are provided with all kinds of commodities, native and foreign, in the required quantity; and whatever difference there may be in demand as the effect of caprice, of taste, or by the variation of population; without there often being a glut by too abundant a supply, or excessive dearness through the poorness of supply compared to demand; we must admit that the principle which distributes capital in each branch of industry in the exact proportions required, is more powerful than is generally supposed." (Ricardo, vol. I., pp. 105 and 108.)
If M. Proudhon accepts the value of products as determined by labor time, he must equally accept the oscillatory movement which alone makes labor time the measure of value. There is no "relation of proportion" completely constituted, there is only a constituting movement.
We have seen in what sense it is correct to speak of the "proportion" as of a consequence of value determined by labor time. We will see now how this measure by time, called by M. Proudhon "law of proportion," transforms itself into a law of disproportion.
Every new invention which permits of the production in one hour of that which hitherto took two hours to produce depreciates all the homogeneous products already on the market. Competition compels the producer to sell the product of two hours as cheaply as the product of one hour. Competition realises the law according to which the relative value of a product is determined by the labor time necessary to produce it. Labor time, ​serving as measure of saleable value, thus becomes the law of a continual depreciation of labor. We will say more. There will be depreciation, not only of the commodities put on the market, but also the instruments of production and of the whole manufacture. This fact Ricardo has already noted in saying: "In constantly increasing the facility of production we constantly reduce the value of the things previously produced."
Sismondi goes further. He sees in this "value constituted" by labor time the source of all the contradictions of modern commerce and industry. "Mercantile value," he says, "is always fixed, in the last analysis, by the quantity of labor necessary to procure the thing valued: it is not what it has actually cost, but what it will cost henceforth with perhaps perfect means; and this quantity, however difficult it may be to appreciate, is always established with fidelity by competition. . . . . It is on this basis that is calculated the demand of the seller and the offer of the purchaser. The first will perhaps affirm that the thing has cost him ten days' labor; but if the other recognises that he may henceforth accomplish it with eight days' labor, if competition carries the demonstration to the two contracting parties, it will be to eight days only that the value will be reduced, and that the market price will be established. The two contracting parties have indeed, it is true, the notion that the thing is useful, that it is desired, that without desire there would be no sale; but the fixation of price has no connection with utility." ("Études," &c., Vol. II., p. 267, Brussels edition.)
It is important to insist upon this point, that what determines value is not the time in which a thing has been produced, but the minimum time in which it is susceptible ​of being produced, and this minimum is demonstrated by competition. Suppose for a moment that there is no longer any competition, and therefore, no means of demonstrating the minimum of labor necessary for the production of a commodity, what would be the result? It would suffice to put six hours' labor into the production of a commodity in order to have the right, according to M. Proudhon, to exact in exchange six times as much as he who has devoted only one hour to the production of the same article.
In place of a "relation of proportion" we have a relation of disproportion, if we are at all times willing to remain in these relations, good or evil.
The continual depreciation of labor is only a single side, only a single consequence of the valuation of commodities by labor time. The inflation of prices, overproduction, and many other of the phenomena of industrial anarchy find their interpretation in this mode of valuation.
But labor time serving as means of value, does it at least give rise to the proportional variety in commodities which so charms M. Proudhon?
On the contrary, monopoly in all its dreary monotony, follows in its train and invades the world of commodities, as, in the sight and to the knowledge of everybody, monopoly invades the world of the instruments of production. It appertains only to certain branches of industry to make very rapid progress, as, for instance, the cotton industry. The natural consequence of this progress is that the products manufactured from cotton fall rapidly in price; but in proportion as the prices of cotton falls the price of linen must rise in comparison. What is the result? Linen is replaced by cotton. It is in this way that linen has been nearly driven out of the ​whole of North America. And we have obtained instead of the proportional variety of product, the reign of cotton.
What now remains of this "relation of proportion." Nothing but the vow of an honest man, who would that the commodities should be produced in such proportions that they can be sold at an honest price. In all times the good bourgeois and the philanthropist economists have been pleased to make this innocent vow.
Let us hear old Bois-Guillebert: "The price of commodities," says he, "must always be proportioned, there being only this intelligence which can make them live together to constantly give and receive reciprocally (see the continual exchangeability of M. Proudhon) birth to one another. . . . . As wealth, then, is only this constant intercourse between man and man, between metier and metier, it is a fearful blindness to seek for the cause of poverty elsewhere than in the cessation of such commerce brought about by the derangement in the proportion of prices." ("Dissertations sur la Nature des Richesses.")
Listen also to a modern economist.
"A great law which must be applied to production, is the law of proportion, which can alone preserve the continuity of value. . . . . The equivalent must be guaranteed . . . . All the nations have essayed at different epochs, by means of numerous commercial regulations and restrictions, to realise up to a certain point this law of proportion; but egoism, inherent in the nature of man, has forced him to overthrow all this regulation régime. A proportional production is the realisation of the entire truth of the science of social economy." (W. Atkinson, "Principles of Political Economy," London, 1840, pp. 170–195.)
Fuit Troja. This true proportion between supply and demand which again begins to become the object of so ​many vows, has long ceased to exist. It has died of old age. It was only possible in the epoch in which the means of production were limited, and in which exchange only took place within very narrow limits. With the birth of the great industry this just proportion disappeared, and production was fatally constrained to pass in a perpetual succession, through the vicissitudes of prosperity, depression, crisis, stagnation, new prosperity, and so on in succession.
Those who, like Sismondi, would return to the just proportion of production, while conserving the existing bases of society, are reactionary, since, to be consistent, they must also desire to re-establish all the other conditions of past times.
What was it which maintained production in just proportion, or nearly so? It was the demand which governed the supply which preceded it. Production followed consumption step by step. The great industry, forced by the very instruments of which it disposed to produce on an ever-increasing scale, could not wait for the demand. Production preceded consumption, the supply forced the demand.
In existing society, in the industry based on individual exchanges, the anarchy of production, which is the source of so much misery, is at the same time the source of all progress.
Thus of two things, one:
Either you would have the just proportions of past centuries, with the means of production of our epoch, in which case you are at once a reactionary and a utopian;
Or, you would have progress without anarchy: In which case, in order to conserve productive forces, you must abandon individual exchanges.
Individual exchanges accord only with the small ​industry of past centuries and its corollary of "just proportion," or with the great industry and all its train of misery and anarchy.
After all, the determination of value by labor time, that is to say the formula which M. Proudhon has given us as the regenerating formula of the future, is then only the scientific expression of the economic relations of existing society, as Ricardo has clearly and definitely demonstrated it long before M. Proudhon.
But at least the "equalitarian" application of this formula belongs to M. Proudhon. Is it he who has first thought of reforming society by transforming all men into immediate workers, exchanging quantities of equal labor? Is it indeed for him to make to the Communists—these people innocent of all knowledge of political economy, these "obstinately stupid men," these "paradisical dreamers"—the reproach of not having found before him, this "solution of the problem of the proletariat"?
Whoever is, no matter how little, acquainted with the movement of political economy in England, knows that nearly all the Socialists of that country have, at different times, proposed the equalitarian application of the Ricardian theory. We may cite to M. Proudhon the "Political Economy" of Hopkins; William Thompson: "An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth most Conducive to Human Happiness," 1827: T. R. Edmonds: "Practical, Moral, and Political Economy," 1828, &c., &c., and we might add pages of &c. We will content ourselves with quoting an English Communist. We will reproduce the decisive passage of his remarkable work, "Labor's Wrongs and Labor's Remedy," Leeds, 1839, and we will dwell upon it at sufficient length; in the first place, because J. F. Bray is yet but ​little known in France; and, further, because we believe we have there found the key of the past, present and future works of M. Proudhon.
"The only way to arrive at truth is to go at once to first principles. . . . . Let us go at once to the source from whence governments themselves have arisen. . . . . By thus going to the origin of the thing we shall find that every form of government, and every social and governmental wrong, owes its rise to the existing social system—to the institution of property as it at present exists—and that, therefore, if we would end our wrongs and our miseries at once and for ever, the present arrangements of society must be totally subverted, and supplanted by those more in accordance with the principles of justice and the rationality of man.
"By thus fighting them upon their own ground, and with their own weapons, we shall avoid that senseless clatter respecting 'visionaries' and 'theorists' with which they are so ready to assail all who dare move one step from that beaten track which 'by authority' has been pronounced to be the only right one. Before the conclusions arrived at by such a course of proceeding can be overthrown the economists must unsay or disprove those established truths and principles on which their own arguments are founded." (J. F. Bray, pp. 17 and 41.)
"it is labor alone which bestows value. . . . . Every man has an undoubted right to all that his honest labor can procure him. When he thus appropriates the fruits of his labor he commits no injustice upon any other human being, for he interferes with no other man's right of doing the same with the produce of his labor. . . . . All these ideas of superior and inferior—of master and man—may be traced to the neglect of first principles, and to the consequent rise of inequality of possessions; ​and such ideas will never be eradicated, nor the institutions founded upon them be subverted, so long as this inequality is maintained. Men have hitherto blindly hoped to remedy the present unnatural state of things, and to institute equality of rights and laws by removing one rich tyrant and setting up another—by destroying existing inequality and leaving untouched the cause of the inequality; but it will shortly be seen that it is not in the nature of any mere governmental change to afford permanent relief—that misgovernment is not a cause but a consequence—that it is not the creator, but the created—that it is the offspring of inequality of possessions; and that inequality of possessions is inseparably connected with our present social system." (J. F. Bray, pp. 33, 36 and 37.)
"Not only are the greatest advantages, but strict justice also, on the side of a system of equality. . . . . Every man is a link, and an indispensable link, in the chain of effects—the beginning of which is but an idea, and the end, perhaps, the production of a piece of cloth. Thus, although we may entertain different feelings towards the several parties, it does not follow that one should be better paid for his labor than another. The inventor will ever receive, in addition to his just pecuniary reward, that which genius only can obtain from us—the tribute of our admiration."
"From the very nature of labor and exchange, strict justice not only requires that all exchangers should be mutually, but that they should likewise be equally benefited. Men have only two things which they can exchange with each other, namely, labor, and the produce of labor; therefore, let them exchange as they will, they merely give, as it were, labor for labor. If a just system of exchanges were acted upon, the value ​of all articles would be determined by the entire cost of production, and equal values should always exchange for equal values. If, for instance, it takes a hatter one day to make a hat, and a shoemaker the same time to make a pair of shoes—supposing the material used by each to be of the same value—and they exchange these articles with each other, they are not only mutually but equally benefited: the advantage derived by either party cannot be a disadvantage to the other, as each has given the same amount of labor, and the materials made use of by each were of equal value. But if the hatter should obtain two pair of shoes for one hat—time and value of material being as before—the exchange would clearly be an unjust one. The hatter would defraud the shoemaker of one day's labor; and were the former to act thus in all his exchanges he would receive for the labor of half a year, the product of some other person's whole year; therefore the gain of the first would necessarily be a loss to the last. We have heretofore acted upon no other than this most unjust system of exchanges—the workmen have given the capitalist the labor of a whole year in exchange for the value of only half a year—and from this, and not from the assumed inequality of bodily and mental powers, in individuals, has arisen the inequality of wealth and power which at present exists around us. It is an inevitable condition of inequality of exchanges—of buying at one price and selling at another—that capitalists shall continue to be capitalists and working men be working men, the one a class of tyrants and the other a class of slaves. . . . . The whole transaction, therefore, plainly shows that the capitalists and proprietors do no more than give the working man, for his labor of one week, a part of the wealth which they obtained from him the week before!—which just amounts ​to giving him nothing for something. . . . . The whole transaction, therefore, between the producer and the capitalist is a palpable deception, a mere farce; it is, in fact, in thousands of instances, no more than a barefaced though a legalised robbery." (J. F. Bray, pp. 45, 48, 49 and 50.)
"The gain of the employer will never cease to be the loss of the employed, until the exchanges between the parties are equal; and exchanges never can be equal while society is divided into capitalists and producers—the last living upon their labor, and the first bloating upon the profit of that labor."
"It is plain," continues Bray, "that you may establish whatever form of government you will . . . . that you may talk of morality and brotherly love . . . . no such reciprocity can exist where there are unequal exchanges, and inequality of rewards for equal services.. . . . Inequality of exchanges, as being the cause of inequality of possessions, is the secret enemy that devours us."
"It has been deduced, also, from a consideration of the intention and end of society, not only that all men should labor, and thereby become exchangers, but that equal values should always exchange for equal values—and that as the gain of one man ought never to be the loss of another, value should ever be determined by cost of production. But we have seen that, under the present arrangements of society, all men do not labor . . . . that the gain of the capitalist and the rich man is always the loss of the workman—that this result will invariably take place, and the poor man be left entirely at the mercy of the rich man, so long as there is inequality of exchanges—and that equality of exchanges can be insured only under social arrangements in which labor is universal. . . . . If exchanges were equal, the wealth of ​the present capitalists would gradually go from them to the working classes." (Bray, pp. 51, 52, 53 and 55.)
"So long as the system of unequal exchanges is tolerated, the producers will be almost as poor and as ignorant and as hardworked as they are at present, even if every Governmental burden be swept away and all taxes be abolished.. . . . Nothing but a total change of system—an equalising of labor and exchanges—can alter this state of things for the better, and ensure men a true equality of rights.. . . . The producers have but to make an effort—and by them must every effort for their own redemption be made—and their chains will be snapped asunder for ever.. . . . As an end political equality is a failure. As a means, also, it is a failure. . . . Where things are of equal value, and they are exchanged unequally, the gain of one exchanger must ever be the loss of another . . . . for every exchange is then simply a transfer, and not a sacrifice of labor and wealth. Thus, although under a social system based on equal exchanges, a parsimonious man may become rich, his wealth will be no more than the accumulated produce of his own labor. He may exchange his wealth or he may give it to others who will exchange it for an equal value of the wealth of other persons; but a rich man cannot continue wealthy for any length of time after he has ceased to labor. Under equality of exchanges, wealth cannot have, as it has now, a procreative and apparently self-generating power, such as replenishes all waste from consumption; for, unless it be renewed by labor, wealth, when once consumed, is given up for ever. That which is now called profit and interest cannot exist, as such, in connection with equality of exchanges, for producer and distributor would be alike remunerated, and the sum total of their labor would determine the value of the article created and brought to ​the hands of the consumer. The principle of equal exchanges, therefore, must, from its very nature, ensure universal labor." (Bray, pp. 67, 88, 89, 94, 109 and 110.) After having rebutted the objections of the economists to communism, Bray continues thus: "If a changed character be essential to the success of the social system of community in its most perfect form—and if, likewise, the present system affords no circumstances and no facilities for effecting the requisite change of character and preparing man for the higher and better state desired, it is evident that things must remain as they are… unless some preparatory steps be discovered and made use of—some movement partaking partly of the present and partly of the desired system, some intermediate resting-place, to which society may go with all its faults and all its follies, and from which it may move forward, imbued with those qualities and attributes without which the system of community and equality cannot as such have existence." (Bray, p. 134.)
"The whole movement would require only co-operation in its simplest form. . . . . Cost of production would in every instance determine value; and equal values would always exchange for equal values. If one person worked a whole week, and another worked only half a week, the first would receive double the remuneration of the last; but this extra pay of the one would not be at the expense of the other, nor would the loss incurred by the last man fall in any way upon the first. Each person would exchange the wages he individually received for commodities of the same value as his respective wages; and in no case could the gain of one man or one trade be a loss to another man or another trade. The labor of every individual would alone determine his gain and his losses."
​"By means of general and local boards of trade, and the directors attached to each individual company, the quantities of the various commodities required for consumption (the relative value of each in regard to each other), the number of hands required in various trades and descriptions of labor, and all other matters connected with production and distribution, could in a short time be as easily determined for a nation as for an individual company under the present arrangements . . . . As individuals compose families, and families towns, under the existing system, so likewise would they after the joint-stock change had been effected. The present distribution of people in towns and villages, bad as it is, would not be directly interfered with. . . . . Under this joint-stock system . . . . every individual would be at liberty to accumulate as much as he pleased, and to enjoy such accumulations when and where he might think proper. . . . . Society would be, as it were, one great joint-stock company, composed of an indefinite number of smaller companies, all laboring, producing and exchanging with each other on terms of the most perfect equality. . . . ."
"Our new system of society by shares, which is only a concession made to existing society, in order to arrive at communism, established in such a way as to admit of individual property in productions in connection with a common property in production powers—making every individual dependent on his own exertions, and at the same time allowing him an equal participation in every advantage afforded by nature and art—is fitted to take society as it is, and to prepare the way for other and better changes." (Bray, pp. 158, 160, 162, 163, 168, 170 and 194.)
We have only a few words to say in reply to Mr. ​Bray, who, quite in spite of ourselves, we find to have supplanted M. Proudhon, inasmuch as Mr. Bray, far from wishing to have the last word of humanity, only proposes such measures as he believes good for a period of transition between existing society and a system of communism.
An hour of the labor of Peter is exchanged for an hour of the labor of Paul. That is the fundamental axiom of Mr. Bray. Suppose Peter has performed twelve hours' work and Paul has only done six; then Peter will only be able to make with Paul an exchange of six against six. Peter will consequently have six hours' labor remaining. What will he do with these six hours of labor?
Either he will do nothing with them, that is to say he will have worked six hours for nothing; or maybe he will idle six hours in order to equalise matters; or, again, and this is his last resource, he will give to Paul these six hours, with which he can do nothing else, into the bargain.
Thus at the end of the account, what has Peter gained on Paul? Some hours of labor? No. He will have gained only some hours of leisure; he will be compelled to be an idler for six hours. And for this new right of idleness to be not only accepted but appreciated in the new society it is necessary that the latter should find its highest felicity in laziness and that labor should weigh upon it like a chain from which it must free itself at any cost. Yet still, if these hours of leisure which Peter has gained over Paul were only a real gain! But no. Paul, in beginning by working only six hours, arrives by steady and regular labor at the same result as Peter only obtains by commencing with an excess of labor. Each would desire to be Paul, there would be competition ​to obtain the position of Paul, a competition in idleness.
Ah well! What has the exchange of equal quantities of labor given us? Overproduction, depreciation, overwork followed by enforced idleness; in fine, the economic relations such as we see them in existing society, less the competition of labor.
But no, we deceive ourselves. There would be still an expedient by which the new society, the society of Peters and Pauls, could be saved. Peter might eat all alone the product of the six hours of labor which remained to him. But from the moment in which there is no more exchanging in order to have a product, there is no longer production in order to exchange, and all the supposition of a society founded on exchange and the division of labor falls to the ground. We should have saved the equality of exchanges, only through the cessation of exchange: Paul and Peter would have arrived at the condition of Robinson Crusoe.
Then if we imagine all the members of society to be workers, the exchange of equal quantities of hours of labor is only possible on condition that we understand beforehand the number of hours necessary to employ in material production. But such an understanding denies individual exchange.
We shall still arrive at the same result if we take for a starting point, not the distribution of the products created, but the act of production. In the great industry Peter is not free to fix for himself the time of his labor, because the labor of Peter is nothing without the co-operation of all the Peters and all the Pauls in the establishment. It is this which clearly explains the obstinate resistance of the English manufacturer to the Ten Hours Bill. They knew very well that a reduction of two hours' labor given to the women and children ​would be sure to result in a reduction of the hours of labor of adult men. It is in the nature of the great industry that the hours of labor should be equal for all. That which is to-day the result of capital and the competition of the workers among themselves, will be to-morrow, if you cut off the relation between labor and capital, the effect of an understanding based on the relation of the sum of the productive forces to the sum of existing wants.
But such an understanding is the condemnation of individual exchange, and so we arrive once more at our first result.
In principle there is no exchange of products, but exchange of the labors which co-operate in production. The mode of exchange of the products depends upon the mode of production of the productive forces. Generally the form of the exchange of products corresponds to the form of production. Change the latter and the former finds itself changed as a consequence. We may also see in the history of society the mode of exchanging products regulated by the method of producing them. Individual exchange also corresponds to a determined method of production, which itself corresponds to the antagonism of classes. Thus there is no individual exchange without the antagonism of classes.
But the honest consciences refuse to accept this evidence. So long as one is bourgeois one cannot do other than see in this relation of antagonism a relation of harmony and eternal justice, which permits no one to get value at the expense of another. For the bourgeois individual exchange can exist without the antagonism of classes; for him these are two entirely incompatible things. Individual exchange, as it presents itself to the ​bourgeois, is far from resembling individual exchange as it is in actual practice.
Mr. Bray makes of the illusion of the honest bourgeois the ideal which he desires to realise. In purifying individual exchange, in freeing it from all the antagonistic elements he finds in it, he believes he has found an "equalitarian" relation which he desires to see adopted by society.
Mr. Bray does not see that this equalitarian relation, this corrective ideal, which he wishes to apply to the world is itself nothing but the reflection of the existing world, and that it is in consequence quite impossible to reconstitute society on a basis which is only an embellished shadow. In proportion as this shadow becomes substance, it is seen that this substance, far from being the dreamed-of transfiguration, is nothing but the body of existing society.