The synthetic law may be reduced to this formula:
Value, which is social property, springs from Effort and Obstacle.
In proportion as the obstacle is lessened, effort, value, or the domain of property, is diminished along with it.
With reference to each given satisfaction, Property always recedes and Community always advances.
Must we then conclude with M. Proudhon that the days of Property are numbered? Because, as regards each useful result to be realized, each satisfaction to be obtained, Property recedes before Community, are we thence to conclude that the former is about to be absorbed and annihilated altogether?
To adopt this conclusion would be to mistake completely the nature of man. We encounter here a sophism analogous to the one we have already refuted on the subject of the interest of capital. Interest has a tendency to fall, it is said; then it is destined ultimately to disappear altogether. Value and property go on diminishing; then they are destined, it is now said, to be annihilated.
The whole sophism consists in omitting the words, for each determinate result. It is quite true that men obtain determinate results with a less amount of effort—it is in this respect that they are progressive and perfectible—it is on this account that we are able to affirm that the relative domain of property becomes narrower, looking at it as regards each given satisfaction.
But it is not true that all the results which it is possible to obtain are ever exhausted, and hence it is absurd to suppose that it is in the nature of progress to lessen or limit the absolute domain of property.
We have repeated often, and in every shape, that each given effort may, in course of time, serve as the vehicle of a greater amount of gratuitous utility, without our being warranted thence to conclude that men should ever cease to make efforts. All that we can conclude from it is, that their forces, thus rendered disposable, will be employed in combating other obstacles, and will realize, with equal labour, satisfactions hitherto unknown.
I must enlarge still farther on this idea. These are not times to leave anything to possible misconstruction when we venture to pronounce the fearful words, Property and Community.