In fact, if Value resides in matter, it becomes mixed up with the physical qualities of bodies which render them useful to man. Now, these qualities are frequently placed there by nature. Then nature co-operates in creating Value, and we find ourselves attributing value to what is essentially common and gratuitous. On what basis, then, do you place property? When the remuneration which I give in order to obtain a material product, corn for example, is distributed among all the labourers, near or at a distance, who have rendered me a service in the production of that commodity,—who is to receive that portion of the value which corresponds to the action of nature, and with which man has nothing to do? Is it Providence who is to receive it? No one will say so, for we never heard of Nature demanding wages. Is man to receive it? What title has he to it, seeing that, by the hypothesis, he has done nothing?
Do not suppose that I am exaggerating, and that, for the sake of my own definition, I am torturing the definition of the economists, and deducing from it too rigorous conclusions. No, these consequences they have themselves very explicitly deduced, under the pressure of logic.
Thus, Senior has said that “those who have appropriated natural agents receive, under the form of rent, a recompense without having made any sacrifice. They merely hold out their hands to receive the offerings of the rest of the community.” Scrope tells us that “landed property is an artificial restriction imposed upon the enjoyment of those gifts which the Creator has intended for the satisfaction of the wants of all.” J. B. Say has these words: “Arable lands would seem to form a portion of natural wealth, seeing that they are not of human creation, and that nature has given them to man gratuitously. But as this description of wealth is not fugitive, like air and water,—as a field is a space fixed and marked out which certain men have succeeded in appropriating, to the exclusion of all others who have given their consent to this appropriation, land, which was natural [p155] and gratuitous property, has now become social wealth, the use of which must be paid for.”
Truly, if it be so, Proudhon is justified in proposing this terrible question, followed by an affirmation still more terrible:—
“To whom belongs the rent of land? To the producer of land, without doubt. Who made the land? God. Then, proprietor, begone!”
Yes, by a vicious definition, Political Economy has handed over logic to the Communists. I will break this terrible weapon in their hands, or rather they shall surrender it to me cheerfully. The consequences will disappear when I have annihilated the principle. And I undertake to demonstrate that if, in the production of wealth, the action of nature is combined with the action of man, the first—gratuitous and common in its own nature—remains gratuitous and common in all our transactions; that the second alone represents services, value; that the action of man alone is remunerated; and that it alone is the foundation, explanation, and justification of Property. In a word, I maintain that, relatively to each other, men are proprietors only of the value of things, and that in transferring products from hand to hand, what they stipulate for exclusively is value, that is to say, reciprocal services:—all the qualities, properties, and utilities, which these products derive from nature being obtained by them into the bargain.
If Political Economy hitherto, in disregarding this fundamental consideration, has shaken the guardian principle of property, by representing it as an artificial institution, necessary, indeed, but unjust, she has by the same act left in the shade, and completely unperceived, another admirable phenomenon the most touching dispensation of Providence to the creature—the phenomenon of progressive community.
Wealth, taking the word in its general acceptation, results from the combination of two agencies—the action of nature, and the action of man. The first is gratuitous and common by the destination of Providence, and never loses that character. The second alone is provided with value, and, consequently, appropriated. But with the development of intelligence, and the progress of civilisation, the one takes a greater and greater part, the other a less and less part, in the realization of each given utility; whence it follows that the domain of the Gratuitous and the Common is continually expanding among men relatively to the domain of Value and Property; a consoling and suggestive view of the subject, entirely hidden from the eye of science, so long as we continue to attribute Value to the co-operation of nature. [p156]
Men of all religions thank God for His benefits. The father of a family blesses the bread which he breaks and distributes to his children—a touching custom, that reason would not justify were the liberality of Providence other than gratuitous.
Durableness, conservability—that pretended sine quâ non of Value, is connected with the subject which I have just been discussing. It is necessary to the very existence of value, as Adam Smith thinks, that it should be fixed and realized in something which can be exchanged, accumulated, preserved, consequently in something material.