God has placed certain Materials and certain Forces at the disposal of man. In order to obtain possession of these materials and forces, Labour is necessary, or it is not. If it be not necessary, no one will voluntarily consent to purchase from another, by means of an effort, what, without any effort, he can obtain from the hands of Nature. In this case, services, exchange, value, Property, are out of the question. If, on the other hand, labour be necessary, in equity it falls upon the person who is to receive the satisfaction; whence it follows that the satisfaction is the recompense of the pains taken, the effort made, the labour undergone. Here you have the principle of Property. This being so, a man takes pains, or submits to labour, for his own benefit, and becomes possessed of the whole utility realized by this labour co-operating with nature. He takes pains, or submits to labour, for another, and in that case he bargains to receive in return an equivalent service, which is likewise the vehicle of utility, and the result exhibits two Efforts, two Utilities which have changed hands, and two Satisfactions. But we must not lose sight of this, that the transaction is effected by the comparison, by the appreciation, not of the two utilities (they cannot be brought to this test), but of the two services exchanged. It is then exact to say that, in a personal point of view, man, by means of labour, becomes proprietor of natural utility (that is the object of his labour), whatever be the relation (which may vary ad infinitum) of labour to utility. But in a social point of view, or in reference to each other, men are never proprietors except of value, the foundation of which is not the liberality of nature, but human service, pains taken, danger encountered, skill displayed, in securing that liberality. In a word, in what concerns natural and gratuitous utility, the last acquirer, the person who is the recipient of the satisfaction, is placed, by exchange, in the shoes of the first labourer. The latter has found himself in presence of a gratuitous utility which he has taken the pains to appropriate; the former returns him an equivalent service, and thus substitutes himself in the other’s right and place; utility is acquired by him by the same title, that is to say, by a gratuitous title, on condition of pains taken. There is here, neither in fact nor in appearance, any improper interception of the gifts of God.
I venture, then, to lay down this proposition as unassailable:
In relation to one another, men are proprietors only of values, and values represent only services compared, and voluntarily received and rendered. [p227]
That, on the one hand, the true meaning of the word value is what I have already demonstrated it to be (Chapter V.); and that, on the other, men are never, and never can be, as regards each other, proprietors of anything but value, is evident as well from reasoning as from experience. From reasoning—for why should I go to purchase from a man, by means of an effort, what, without any effort, I can obtain from nature? From universal experience, which is too weighty to be despised in this question,—nothing being more fitted to give us confidence in a theory than the rational and practical acquiescence of men of all ages and all countries. Now I say that universal consent ratifies the sense which I give here to the word Property. When a public officer makes an inventory after a death, or by authority of justice, of when a merchant, manufacturer, or farmer does the same thing for his own satisfaction, or when it is done by officials under a bankruptcy—what do they inscribe on the stamped rolls as each object presents itself? Is it its utility, its intrinsic merit? No, it is its value, that is to say, the equivalent of the trouble which, any purchaser taken at random would have in procuring himself a similar commodity. Does a jury named by a judge to report upon a work or a commodity inquire whether it be more useful than another work or commodity? Do they take into consideration the enjoyments which may be thereby procured? Do they esteem a hammer more than a china jar, because the hammer is admirably adapted to make the law of gravitation available to its possessor? or a glass of water more than a diamond, because the former is capable of rendering more substantial service? or the work of Say more than the work of Fourier, because from the former we can draw more rational enjoyment and more solid instruction? No, they value, they set down the value, in rigorous conformity, observe, with my definition, or, to say better, it is my definition which is in conformity with their practice. They take into account, not the natural advantages, or the gratuitous utility, attached to each commodity, but the exertion which each acquirer should have to make for himself, or to require another to make for him, in order to procure it. They never think of the exertion which nature has made, if I may hazard the expression, but upon the exertion which the purchaser would have had to make. And when the operation is terminated, when the public is told the sum total of Value which is carried to the balance-sheet, they exclaim with one voice, Here is the wealth which is available to the Proprietor.
As property includes nothing but value, and as value expresses only a relation, it follows that property itself is only a relation. [p228]
When the public, on the inspection of two inventories, pronounces one man to be richer than another, it is not meant to say that the relative amount of the two properties is indicative of the relative absolute wealth of the two men, or the amount of enjoyments they can command. There enters into positive satisfactions and enjoyments a certain amount of common and gratuitous utility which alters this proportion very much. As regards the light of day, the air we breathe, the heat of the sun, all men are equal; and Inequality—as indicative of a difference in property or value —has reference only to onerous utility.
Now I have often said, and I shall probably have occasion frequently to repeat the remark (for it is the finest and most striking, although perhaps the least understood, of the social harmonies, and includes all the others), that it is of the essence of progress—and indeed in this alone progress consists—to transform onerous into gratuitous utility—to diminish value without diminishing utility—to permit each individual to procure the same things with less effort, either to make or to remunerate; to increase continually the mass of things which are common, and the enjoyment of which, being distributed in a uniform manner among all, effaces by degrees the Inequality which results from difference of fortune.
We must not omit to analyze very carefully the result of this mechanism.
In contemplating the phenomena of the social world, how often have I had occasion to feel the profound justice of Rousseau’s saying: “Il faut beaucoup de philosophie pour observer ce qu’on voit tous les jours!” It is difficult to observe accurately what we see every day; Custom, that veil which blinds the eyes of the vulgar, and which the attentive observer cannot always throw off, prevents our discerning the most marvellous of all the Economic phenomena: real wealth falling incessantly from the domain of Property into that of Community.
Let us endeavour to demonstrate and explain this democratic evolution, and, if possible, test its range and its effects.