We know to-day for certain that the rise of communal possession in land was always inseparably connected with the introduction of slavery, and that one cannot be thought of without the other. But to wish to imagine equality in addition to the collective possession of primitive society is to a great extent a distortion of the facts of history. Whatever facts we may produce from the actual and not merely imaginary primitive history of property would be so many arguments against Proudhon's contention. His economic argument is just as untenable, that labour should lead to equality. All work, according to Proudhon, is the effective of a collective force, which is equal to the resultants of the forces of the single individuals who form the labour group. Consequently, the product of labour is the property of the whole community, and every worker has an equal claim to it. This is, briefly, the argument which, from premises that are possibly correct, draws conclusions that are entirely false. Proudhon gives the following example: "Two hundred grenadiers placed the obelisk of Luxor on its pedestal in a few hours, and yet we do not believe that one man could have performed the same work in two hundred days. The collective force is greater than the sum of individual forces and individual efforts. Therefore the capitalist has not rewarded the labourer fairly when he pays wages for one day multiplied by the number of day-labourers employed by him."
It will be seen that Proudhon here proceeds from the assumption that the value of a product of a labour is a firmly established and easily fixed amount, as John Grey and Rodbertus had taught before him; for only in this case could it be exactly stated how great the claim is which belongs to a labourer. In fact, the characteristic feature of Proudhon's theory of value lies in his endeavour to determine and fix values; that is, to use his own dialectic jargon, according to the synthetic solution of the antithesis of value in use and value in exchange, in which our economic life fluctuates. Supply and demand, considered by others as the factors which regulate and determine value, are to him only forms which serve to contrast with one another the value in use and value in exchange, and to cause these values to combine. From justice, which ought to be the foundation of society, he concludes the necessity, and from general obedience of life to law the possibility, of a determination of values. Even this value, thus determined, will be a variable amount, a proportionate figure, similar to the index which in the case of chemical elements gives their combining weights. "But this value will none the less be strictly fixed. Value may alter, but the law of values is unalterable; indeed, the fact that value is capable of alteration only results from its being subject to a law whose principle is essentially fluctuating, for it is labour measured by time." (Contradictions, i., "On the Theory of Value.") Value is thus brought into consideration within the community which producers form among themselves by means of the division of labour and exchange, the relation of the proportion of the products which compose riches, and that which is specially termed the value of a product is a formula which assigns a proportion of this product in coins in the general wealth.
Leaving out of the question the moral arrangement of the world, which even here has contributed to this definition of double meaning, we may ask, how is this formula, which assigns in coins the proportion of the product in the general wealth, reckoned? Proudhon has always appealed only to the realisation of the idea through the actual circulation of values on the one hand, and to the law-abiding character of nature on the other. Upon the point of "realisation" we shall have something to say later. But the law-abiding character of life is, however, just as much an algebraical expression as the "proportion of the product." Supposing both are not disputed, what follows, then? If I know the exact formula for the direction and velocity of a projectile, shall I now be able to protect myself from every bullet by merely getting out of its way? The introduction of statistical methods into the general formula for special values Proudhon has himself excluded as incorrect. The question settles itself. Society goes on of its own accord—laissez aller, laissez faire—everything remains in the old way. In addition to this mistake, we find that there is in Proudhon's mind great confusion with regard to the two ideas of time of labour and value of labour.
"Adam Smith takes as a measure of value sometimes the time necessary to produce a commodity and sometimes the value of labour," says Marx in his celebrated polemic against Proudhon.[13] "Ricardo discovered this error by clearly proving the difference between these two modes of measurement. Proudhon, however, goes even farther than the error of Adam Smith, by identifying two things which Smith has only brought into juxtaposition. To find the right proportion according to which the labourers should have their share in the products of their labour, or, in other words, to determine the relative value of labour, Proudhon seeks some measure for the relative value of commodities. To determine the measure for the relative value of commodities he cannot invent anything better than to give us as an equivalent for a certain quantity of work, the total of the products made by it; which leaves us to suppose that the whole of society consists of nothing but labourers, who receive as wages what they themselves produce. In the second place, he maintains the equal value of the working days of different labourers as an actual fact; in a word, he seeks the measure for the relative value of commodities in order to discover the equal payment of labourers, and assumes the equality of payment as a settled fact, in order to proceed to search for the relative value of commodities."
If we turn back to the question, What is property? we find this confusion of ideas is answerable for his unsuccessful attempt to prove that labour must create equality and annihilate property. Here, too, the equality of the working days is assumed, and therefore the equality of wages is demanded. But, then, immediately this working day is changed into his work done in a day (tâche sociale journalière). "Let us assume," says he, "that this social day's work amounts to the cultivation or weeding or harvesting of two square decametres, and the mean average of all the time necessary for these amounts to seven hours. One labourer will finish it in six hours; another in eight hours; the majority will work seven hours; but so long as each performs the amount of work required of him, he deserves the same wages as all the others, however long he may have worked at it." Here time of work has imperceptibly changed into quantity of work, and wages are given, not according to the measure of equal working times but according to the measure of equal performances. Proudhon here seeks for a solution by saying that the more capable workman, who performs his day's work in six hours, should never have the right to usurp the day's work of a less capable labourer, under the pretext of greater strength and activity, and thus rob him of work and bread; it is advantage enough derived from his greater capacities that, by this shortening of his time of labour, he has greater opportunity to work for his own personal education and culture, or to enjoy himself, and so on. But Proudhon must be driven even from this last corner of refuge by the question, What will take place if anyone will perform only the half of his day's work? Proudhon says: "That is all right; obviously half of his wages are sufficient for that man. What has he to complain of if he is rewarded according to the work which he has performed? and what does it matter to others? In this sense it is right and proper to apply the text, 'to each according to his work'; that is the law of equality."[14]
But this is to retract all along the line. Proudhon, who assumes the equality of all working days, and has made it the basis of his theory of value, must now admit the dependence of wages upon the performance of work, and admit also, although reluctantly, the statement of St. Simon, "to each according to his work," which he had set out to refute. He ought to have gone still farther and said: "If anyone will not do any work, what happens then? Obviously the man needs no wages; why should the others then trouble about it?—it is the law of equality." But what becomes then of the equality to which work was said to lead? Further, what about the impossibility of proving the right of property through work? All Proudhon's arguments in proof of the impossibility of property are mere dialectic sword-play which hardly anyone takes seriously. Proudhon does not even criticise actual circumstances, but proves that, following his ideal assumptions (which in any case exclude property), property is impossible.
The supposed result of his book he sums up in the Hegelian formula: "Communism, the first form and the final destiny of society, is the first terminus of social development, the thesis; property, the contradictory opposite to communism, forms the second terminus, the antithesis; it remains for us to determine the third terminus, the synthesis, and then we have the required solution. The synthesis results necessarily from the correction of the thesis by the antithesis. It is therefore necessary to examine closely its peculiarities, and to exclude that which there is in them hostile to society. The two that remain will, when united, form the true formula of human social life."[15]
Karl Marx, who made very merry over Proudhon's dialectic, thought he had played his trump card against the capitalistic method of production in almost the same way, namely, with the Hegelian proposition of the negation of negation. If they both explained themselves by bringing forward, besides the dialectic proof, also an historical and economic one for their contentions, the answer is that historic proof cannot be brought forward for Proudhon's synthetic conception of property or for Marx's method of production, since history only concerns itself with the past or the present; whereas such conditions as they imagine exist only in the future, and can only be derived from the past or present conditions by the dialectic method, and only can be assumed as hypotheses.
This standpoint unites Proudhon and Karl Marx, the Anarchists and the Social Democrats; they both call each other Utopians, and both are right.