Part 7 (1/2)
Society, or the collective man, produces an infinitude of objects, the enjoyment of which const.i.tutes its WELL-BEING.
This well-being is developed not only in the ratio of the QUANt.i.tY of the products, but also in the ratio of their VARIETY (quality) and PROPORTION. From this fundamental datum it follows that society always, at each instant of its life, must strive for such proportion in its products as will give the greatest amount of well-being, considering the power and means of production. Abundance, variety, and proportion in products are the three factors which const.i.tute WEALTH: wealth, the object of social economy, is subject to the same conditions of existence as beauty, the object of art; virtue, the object of morality; and truth, the object of metaphysics.
But how establish this marvelous proportion, so essential that without it a portion of human labor is lost,--that is, useless, inharmonious, untrue, and consequently synonymous with poverty and annihilation?
Prometheus, according to the fable, is the symbol of human activity. Prometheus steals the fire of heaven, and invents the early arts; Prometheus foresees the future, and aspires to equality with Jupiter; Prometheus is G.o.d. Then let us call society Prometheus.
Prometheus devotes, on an average, ten hours a day to labor, seven to rest, and seven to pleasure. In order to gather from his toil the most useful fruit, Prometheus notes the time and trouble that each object of his consumption costs him. Only experience can teach him this, and this experience lasts throughout his life. While laboring and producing, then, Prometheus is subject to an infinitude of disappointments. But, as a final result, the more he labors, the greater is his well-being and the more idealized his luxury; the further he extends his conquests over Nature, the more strongly he fortifies within him the principle of life and intelligence in the exercise of which he alone finds happiness; till finally, the early education of the Laborer completed and order introduced into his occupations, to labor, with him, is no longer to suffer,--it is to live, to enjoy. But the attractiveness of labor does not nullify the rule, since, on the contrary, it is the fruit of it; and those who, under the pretext that labor should be attractive, reason to the denial of justice and to communism, resemble children who, after having gathered some flowers in the garden, should arrange a flower-bed on the staircase.
In society, then, justice is simply the proportionality of values; its guarantee and sanction is the responsibility of the producer.
Prometheus knows that such a product costs an hour's labor, such another a day's, a week's, a year's; he knows at the same time that all these products, arranged according to their cost, form the progression of his wealth. First, then, he will a.s.sure his existence by providing himself with the least costly, and consequently most necessary, things; then, as fast as his position becomes secure, he will look forward to articles of luxury, proceeding always, if he is wise, according to the natural position of each article in the scale of prices.
Sometimes Prometheus will make a mistake in his calculations, or else, carried away by pa.s.sion, he will sacrifice an immediate good to a premature enjoyment, and, after having toiled and moiled, he will starve. Thus, the law carries with it its own sanction; its violation is inevitably accompanied by the immediate punishment of the transgressor.
Say, then, was right in saying: ”The happiness of this cla.s.s (the consumers), composed of all the others, const.i.tutes the general well- being, the state of prosperity of a country.” Only he should have added that the happiness of the cla.s.s of producers, which also is composed of all the others, equally const.i.tutes the general well-being, the state of prosperity of a country. So, when he says: ”The fortune of each consumer is perpetually at war with all that he buys,” he should have added again: ”The fortune of each producer is incessantly attacked by all that he sells.” In the absence of a clear expression of this reciprocity, most economical phenomena become unintelligible; and I will soon show how, in consequence of this grave omission, most economists in writing their books have talked wildly about the balance of trade.
I have just said that society produces first THE LEAST COSTLY, AND CONSEQUENTLY MOST NECESSARY, THINGS. Now, is it true that cheapness of products is always a correlative of their necessity, and vice versa; so that these two words, NECESSITY and CHEAPNESS, like the following ones, COSTLINESS and SUPERFLUITY, are synonymes?
If each product of labor, taken alone, would suffice for the existence of man, the synonymy in question would not be doubtful; all products having the same qualities, those would be most advantageously produced, and therefore the most necessary, which cost the least. But the parallel between the utility and price of products is not characterized by this theoretical precision: either through the foresight of Nature or from some other cause, the balance between needs and productive power is more than a theory,--it is a fact, of which daily practice, as well as social progress, gives evidence.
Imagine ourselves living in the day after the birth of man at the beginning of civilization: is it not true that the industries originally the simplest, those which required the least preparation and expense, were the following: GATHERING, PASTURAGE, HUNTING, and FIs.h.i.+NG, which were followed long afterwards by agriculture? Since then, these four primitive industries have been perfected, and moreover appropriated: a double circ.u.mstance which does not change the meaning of the facts, but, on the contrary, makes it more manifest. In fact, property has always attached itself by preference to objects of the most immediate utility, to MADE VALUES, if I may so speak; so that the scale of values might be fixed by the progress of appropriation.
In his work on the ”Liberty of Labor” M. Dunoyer has positively accepted this principle by distinguis.h.i.+ng four great cla.s.ses of industry, which he arranges according to the order of their development,--that is, from the least labor-cost to the greatest.
These are EXTRACTIVE INDUSTRY,--including all the semi-barbarous functions mentioned above,--COMMERCIAL INDUSTRY, MANUFACTURING, INDUSTRY, AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRY. And it is for a profound reason that the learned author placed agriculture last in the list.
For, despite its great antiquity, it is certain that this industry has not kept pace with the others, and the succession of human affairs is not decided by their origin, but by their entire development. It may be that agricultural industry was born before the others, and it may be that all were contemporary; but that will be deemed of the latest date which shall be perfected last.
Thus the very nature of things, as well as his own wants, indicates to the laborer the order in which he should effect the production of the values that make up his well-being. Our law of proportionality, then, is at once physical and logical, objective and subjective; it has the highest degree of certainty. Let us pursue the application.
Of all the products of labor, none perhaps has cost longer and more patient efforts than the calendar. Nevertheless, there is none the enjoyment of which can now be procured more cheaply, and which, consequently, by our own definitions, has become more necessary. How, then, shall we explain this change? Why has the calendar, so useless to the early hordes, who only needed the alternation of night and day, as of winter and summer, become at last so indispensable, so unexpensive, so perfect? For, by a marvelous harmony, in social economy all these adjectives are interconvertible. How account, in short, by our law of proportion, for the variability of the value of the calendar?
In order that the labor necessary to the production of the calendar might be performed, might be possible, man had to find means of gaining time from his early occupations and from those which immediately followed them. In other words, these industries had to become more productive, or less costly, than they were at the beginning: which amounts to saying that it was necessary first to solve the problem of the production of the calendar from the extractive industries themselves.
Suppose, then, that suddenly, by a fortunate combination of efforts, by the division of labor, by the use of some machine, by better management of the natural resources,--in short, by his industry,--Prometheus finds a way of producing in one day as much of a certain object as he formerly produced in ten: what will follow? The product will change its position in the table of the elements of wealth; its power of affinity for other products, so to speak, being increased, its relative value will be proportionately diminished, and, instead of being quoted at one hundred, it will thereafter be quoted only at ten. But this value will still and always be none the less accurately determined, and it will still be labor alone which will fix the degree of its importance. Thus value varies, and the law of value is unchangeable: further, if value is susceptible of variation, it is because it is governed by a law whose principle is essentially inconstant,--namely, labor measured by time.
The same reasoning applies to the production of the calendar as to that of all possible values. I do not need to explain how--civilization (that is, the social fact of the increase of life) multiplying our tasks, rendering our moments more and more precious, and obliging us to keep a perpetual and detailed record of our whole life--the calendar has become to all one of the most necessary things. We know, moreover, that this wonderful discovery has given rise, as its natural complement, to one of our most valuable industries, the manufacture of clocks and watches.
At this point there very naturally arises an objection, the only one that can be offered against the theory of the proportionality of values.
Say and the economists who have succeeded him have observed that, labor being itself an object of valuation, a species of merchandise indeed like any other, to take it as the princ.i.p.al and efficient cause of value is to reason in a vicious circle.
Therefore, they conclude, it is necessary to fall back on scarcity and opinion.
These economists, if they will allow me to say it, herein have shown themselves wonderfully careless. Labor is said TO HAVE VALUE, not as merchandise itself, but in view of the values supposed to be contained in it potentially. The VALUE OF LABOR is a figurative expression, an antic.i.p.ation of effect from cause.
It is a fiction by the same t.i.tle as the PRODUCTIVITY OF CAPITAL. Labor produces, capital has value: and when, by a sort of ellipsis, we say the value of labor, we make an enjambement which is not at all contrary to the rules of language, but which theorists ought to guard against mistaking for a reality. Labor, like liberty, love, ambition, genius, is a thing vague and indeterminate in its nature, but qualitatively defined by its object,--that is, it becomes a reality through its product.
When, therefore, we say: This man's labor is worth five francs per day, it is as if we should say: The daily product of this man's labor is worth five francs.
Now, the effect of labor is continually to eliminate scarcity and opinion as const.i.tutive elements of value, and, by necessary consequence, to transform natural or indefinite utilities (appropriated or not) into measurable or social utilities: whence it follows that labor is at once a war declared upon the parsimony of Nature and a permanent conspiracy against property.
According to this a.n.a.lysis, value, considered from the point of view of the a.s.sociation which producers, by division of labor and by exchange, naturally form among themselves, is the PROPORTIONAL RELATION OF THE PRODUCTS WHICH CONSt.i.tUTE WEALTH, and what we call the value of any special product is a formula which expresses, in terms of money, the proportion of this product to the general wealth.--Utility is the basis of value; labor fixes the relation; the price is the expression which, barring the fluctuations that we shall have to consider, indicates this relation.