The whole nation, and the nation only, pays its authors, its savants, its artists, its officials, whatever be the hands through which their salaries pass. On what basis should it pay them? On the basis of equality. I have proved it by estimating the value of talent. I shall confirm it in the following chapter, by proving the impossibility of all social inequality.
What have we shown so far? Things so simple that really they seem silly:—
That, as the traveller does not appropriate the route which he traverses, so the farmer does not appropriate the field which he sows;
That if, nevertheless, by reason of his industry, a laborer may appropriate the material which he employs, every employer of material becomes, by the same title, a proprietor;
That all capital, whether material or mental, being the result of collective labor, is, in consequence, collective property;
That the strong have no right to encroach upon the labor of the weak, nor the shrewd to take advantage of the credulity of the simple;
Finally, that no one can be forced to buy that which he does not want, still less to pay for that which he has not bought; and, consequently, that the exchangeable value of a product, being measured neither by the opinion of the buyer nor that of the seller, but by the amount of time and outlay which it has cost, the property of each always remains the same.
Are not these very simple truths? Well, as simple as they seem to you, reader, you shall yet see others which surpass them in dullness and simplicity. For our course is the reverse of that of the geometricians: with them, the farther they advance, the more difficult their problems become; we, on the contrary, after having commenced with the most abstruse propositions, shall end with the axioms.
But I must close this chapter with an exposition of one of those startling truths which never have been dreamed of by legists or economists.
% 8.—That, from the Stand-point of Justice, Labor destroys Property.