Part 9 (1/2)
Every error in commutative justice is an immolation of the laborer, a transfusion of the blood of one man into the body of another. . . . . Let no one be frightened; I have no intention of fulminating against property an irritating philippic; especially as I think that, according to my principles, humanity is never mistaken; that, in establis.h.i.+ng itself at first upon the right of property, it only laid down one of the principles of its future organization; and that, the preponderance of property once destroyed, it remains only to reduce this famous ant.i.thesis to unity. All the objections that can be offered in favor of property I am as well acquainted with as any of my critics, whom I ask as a favor to show their hearts when logic fails them. How can wealth that is not measured by labor be VALUABLE? And if it is labor that creates wealth and legitimates property, how explain the consumption of the idler? Where is the honesty in a system of distribution in which a product is worth, according to the person, now more, now less, than it costs.
Say's ideas led to an agrarian law; therefore, the conservative party hastened to protest against them. ”The original source of wealth,” M. Rossi had said, ”is labor. In proclaiming this great principle, the industrial school has placed in evidence not only an economic principle, but that social fact which, in the hands of a skilful historian, becomes the surest guide in following the human race in its marchings and haltings upon the face of the earth.”
Why, after having uttered these profound words in his lectures, has M. Rossi thought it his duty to retract them afterwards in a review, and to compromise gratuitously his dignity as a philosopher and an economist?
”Say that wealth is the result of labor alone; affirm that labor is always the measure of value, the regulator of prices; yet, to escape one way or another the objections which these doctrines call forth on all hands, some incomplete, others absolute, you will be obliged to generalize the idea of labor, and to subst.i.tute for a.n.a.lysis an utterly erroneous synthesis.”
I regret that a man like M. Rossi should suggest to me so sad a thought; but, while reading the pa.s.sage that I have just quoted, I could not help saying: Science and truth have lost their influence: the present object of wors.h.i.+p is the shop, and, after the shop, the desperate const.i.tutionalism which represents it.
To whom, then, does M. Rossi address himself? Is he in favor of labor or something else; a.n.a.lysis or synthesis? Is he in favor of all these things at once? Let him choose, for the conclusion is inevitably against him.
If labor is the source of all wealth, if it is the surest guide in tracing the history of human inst.i.tutions on the face of the earth, why should equality of distribution, equality as measured by labor, not be a law?
If, on the contrary, there is wealth which is not the product of labor, why is the possession of it a privilege? Where is the legitimacy of monopoly? Explain then, once for all, this theory of the right of unproductive consumption; this jurisprudence of caprice, this religion of idleness, the sacred prerogative of a caste of the elect.
What, now, is the significance of this appeal from a.n.a.lYSIS to the false judgments of the synthesis? These metaphysical terms are of no use, save to indoctrinate simpletons, who do not suspect that the same proposition can be construed, indifferently and at will, a.n.a.lytically or synthetically. LABOR IS THE PRINCIPLE OF VALUE END THE SOURCE OF WEALTH: an a.n.a.lytic proposition such as M. Rossi likes, since it is the summary of an a.n.a.lysis in which it is demonstrated that the primitive notion of labor is identical with the subsequent notions of product, value, capital, wealth, etc. Nevertheless, we see that M. Rossi rejects the doctrine which results from this a.n.a.lysis. LABOR, CAPITAL, AND LAND ARE THE SOURCES OF WEALTH: a synthetic proposition, precisely such as M. Rossi does not like. Indeed, wealth is considered here as a general notion, produced in three distinct, but not identical, ways. And yet the doctrine thus formulated is the one that M. Rossi prefers. Now, would it please M. Rossi to have us render his theory of monopoly a.n.a.lytically and ours of labor synthetically? I can give him the satisfaction. . . . .
But I should blush, with so earnest a man, to prolong such badinage. M. Rossi knows better than any one that a.n.a.lysis and synthesis of themselves prove absolutely nothing, and that the important work, as Bacon said, is to make exact comparisons and complete enumerations.
Since M. Rossi was in the humor for abstractions, why did he not say to the phalanx of economists who listen so respectfully to the least word that falls from his lips:
”Capital is the MATERIAL of wealth, as gold and silver are the material of money, as wheat is the material of bread, and, tracing the series back to the end, as earth, water, fire, and air are the material of all our products. But it is labor, labor alone, which successively creates each utility given to these MATERIALS, and which consequently transforms them into capital and wealth. Capital is the result of labor,-- that is, realized intelligence and life,--as animals and plants are realizations of the soul of the universe, and as the chefs d'oeuvre of Homer, Raphael, and Rossini are expressions of their ideas and sentiments. Value is the proportion in which all the realizations of the human soul must balance each other in order to produce a harmonious whole, which, being wealth, gives us well-being, or rather is the token, not the object, of our happiness.
”The proposition, THERE IS NO MEASURE OF VALUE, is illogical and contradictory, as is shown by the very arguments which have been offered in its support.
”The proposition, LABOR IS THE PRINCIPLE OF PROPORTIONALITY OF VALUES, not only is true, resulting as it does from an irrefutable a.n.a.lysis, but it is the object of progress, the condition and form of social well-being, the beginning and end of political economy. From this proposition and its corollaries, EVERY PRODUCT IS WORTH WHAT IT COSTS, and PRODUCTS ARE BOUGHT WITH PRODUCTs, follows the dogma of equality of conditions.
”The idea of value socially const.i.tuted, or of proportionality of values, serves to explain further: (a) how a mechanical invention, notwithstanding the privilege which it temporarily creates and the disturbances which it occasions, always produces in the end a general amelioration; (b) how the value of an economical process to its discoverer can never equal the profit which it realizes for society; (c) how, by a series of oscillations between supply and demand, the value of every product constantly seeks a level with cost and with the needs of consumption, and consequently tends to establish itself in a fixed and positive manner; (d) how, collective production continually increasing the amount of consumable things, and the day's work constantly obtaining higher and higher pay, labor must leave an excess for each producer; (e) how the amount of work to be done, instead of being diminished by industrial progress, ever increases in both quant.i.ty and quality--that is, in intensity and difficulty--in all branches of industry; (f) how social value continually eliminates fict.i.tious values,--in other words, how industry effects the socialization of capital and property; (g) finally, how the distribution of products, growing in regularity with the strength of the mutual guarantee resulting from the const.i.tution of value, pushes society onward to equality of conditions and fortunes.
”Finally, the theory of the successive const.i.tution of all commercial values implying the infinite progress of labor, wealth, and well-being, the object of society, from the economic point of view, is revealed to us: TO PRODUCE INCESSANTLY, WITH THEE LEAST POSSIBLE AMOUNT OF LABOR FOR EACH PRODUCT, THE GREATEST POSSIBLE QUANt.i.tY AND VARIETY OF VALUES, IN SUCH A WAY AS TO REALIZE, FOR EACH INDIVIDUAL, THE GREATEST AMOUNT OF PHYSICAL, MORAL, AND INTELLECTUAL WELL-BEING, AND, FOR THE RACE, THE HIGHEST PERFECTION AND INFINITE GLORY.
Now that we have determined, not without difficulty, the meaning of the question asked by the Academy of Moral Sciences touching the oscillations of profit and wages, it is time to begin the essential part of our work. Wherever labor has not been socialized,--that is, wherever value is not synthetically determined,--there is irregularity and dishonesty in exchange; a war of stratagems and ambuscades; an impediment to production, circulation, and consumption; unproductive labor; insecurity; spoliation; insolidarity; want; luxury: but at the same time an effort of the genius of society to obtain justice, and a constant tendency toward a.s.sociation and order. Political economy is simply the history of this grand struggle. On the one hand, indeed, political economy, in so far as it sanctions and pretends to perpetuate the anomalies of value and the prerogatives of selfishness, is truly the theory of misfortune and the organization of misery; but in so far as it explains the means invented by civilization to abolish poverty, although these means always have been used exclusively in the interest of monopoly, political economy is the preamble of the organization of wealth.
It is important, then, that we should resume the study of economic facts and practices, discover their meaning, and formulate their philosophy. Until this is done, no knowledge of social progress can be acquired, no reform attempted. The error of socialism has consisted hitherto in perpetuating religious reverie by launching forward into a fantastic future instead of seizing the reality which is crus.h.i.+ng it; as the wrong of the economists has been in regarding every accomplished fact as an injunction against any proposal of reform.
For my own part, such is not my conception of economic science, the true social science. Instead of offering a priori arguments as solutions of the formidable problems of the organization of labor and the distribution of wealth, I shall interrogate political economy as the depositary of the secret thoughts of humanity; I shall cause it to disclose the facts in the order of their occurrence, and shall relate their testimony without intermingling it with my own. It will be at once a triumphant and a lamentable history, in which the actors will be ideas, the episodes theories, and the dates formulas.
CHAPTER III.
ECONOMIC EVOLUTIONS.--FIRST PERIOD.--THE DIVISION OF LABOR.
The fundamental idea, the dominant category, of political economy is VALUE.
Value reaches its positive determination by a series of oscillations between SUPPLY and DEMAND.
Consequently, value appears successively under three aspects: useful value, exchangeable value, and synthetic, or social, value, which is true value. The first term gives birth to the second in contradiction to it, and the two together, absorbing each other in reciprocal penetration, produce the third: so that the contradiction or antagonism of ideas appears as the point of departure of all economic science, allowing us to say of it, parodying the sentence of Tertullian in relation to the Gospel, Credo quia absurdum: There is, in social economy, a latent truth wherever there is an apparent contradiction, Credo quia contrarium.
From the point of view of political economy, then, social progress consists in a continuous solution of the problem of the const.i.tution of values, or of the proportionality and solidarity of products.