"Let us conceive of wealth as a mass whose elements are held together permanently by a chemical force, and into which new elements incessantly enter and combine in different proportions, but according to a definite law: value is the proportion (the measure) in which each of these elements forms a part of the whole."[177] "I suppose, therefore, a force which combines the elements of wealth in definite proportions and makes of them a homogeneous whole."[178] "This force is LABOR. It is labor, labor alone, that produces all the elements of wealth and combines them, to the last molecule, according to a variable but definite law of proportionality."[179] "Every product is a representative sign of labor."[180]
"Every product can consequently be exchanged for another."[181] "If then the tailor, in return for furnishing the value of one day of his work, consumes ten times the weaver's day, it is as if the weaver gave ten days of his life for one day of the tailor's. This is precisely what occurs when a peasant pays a lawyer twelve francs for a document that it costs one hour to draw up; and this inequality, this iniquity in exchange, is the mightiest cause of poverty. Every error in commutative justice is an immolation of the laborer, a transfusion of a man's blood into another man's body."[182]
"What I demand with respect to property is a BALANCE. It is not for nothing that the genius of nations has equipped Justice with this instrument of precision. Justice applied to economy is in fact nothing but a perpetual balance; or, to express myself still more precisely, justice as regards the distribution of goods is nothing but the obligation which rests upon every citizen and every State, in their business relations, to conform to that law of equilibrium which manifests itself everywhere in economy, and whose violation, accidental or voluntary, is the fundamental principle of poverty."[183]
2. That every man should enjoy the product of his labor is possible only through reciprocity, according to Proudhon; therefore he calls his doctrine "the theory of mutuality or of the mutuum."[184] "Reciprocity is expressed in the precept, 'Do to others what you would have done to you,' a precept which political economy has translated into its celebrated formula, 'Products exchange for products.' Now the evil which is devouring us results from the fact that the law of reciprocity is unrecognized, violated. The remedy consists altogether in the promulgation of this law. The organization of our mutual and reciprocal relations is the whole of social science."[185]
And so Proudhon, in the solemn declaration which he prefixed to the constitution of the People's Bank when he first published it, gives the following assurance: "I protest that in criticising property, or rather the whole body of institutions of which property is the pivot, I never meant either to attack the individual rights recognized by previous laws, or to dispute the legitimacy of acquired possessions, or to instigate an arbitrary distribution of goods, or to put an obstacle in the way of the free and regular acquisition of properties by bargain and sale; or even to prohibit or suppress by sovereign decree land-rent and interest on capital. I think that all these manifestations of human activity should remain free and optional for all; I would admit no other modifications, restrictions, or suppressions of them than naturally and necessarily result from the universalization of the principle of reciprocity and of the law of synthesis which I propound. This is my last will and testament. I allow only him to suspect its sincerity, who could tell a lie in the moment of death."[186]
6.—REALIZATION
The change which justice calls for is to come about in this way, that those men who have recognized the truth are to convince others how necessary the change is for the sake of justice, and that hereby, spontaneously, law is to transform itself, the State and property to drop away, and the new condition to appear. The new condition will appear "as soon as the idea is popularized";[187] that it may appear, we must "popularize the idea."[188]
I. Nothing is requisite but to convince men that justice commands the change.
1. Proudhon rejects all other methods. His doctrine is "in accord with the constitution and the laws."[189] "Accomplish the Revolution, they say, and after this everything will be cleared up. As if the Revolution itself could be accomplished without a leading idea!"[190] "To secure justice to one's self by bloodshed is an extremity to which the Californians, gathered since yesterday to seek for gold, may be reduced; but may the luck of France preserve us from it!"[191]
