[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

"Because of the values it is supposed potentially to contain." But if a certain thing is said
to be a commodity, there is no longer any question as to the reason why it is bought, that
is, as to the utility to be derived from it, the application to be made of it. It is a
commodity as an object of traffic. All M. Proudhon's arguments are limited to this: labor
is not bought as an immediate object of consumption. No, it is bought as an instrument of
production, as a machine would be bought. As a commodity, labor has no value and does
not produce. M. Proudhon might just as well have said that there is no such thing as a
commodity, since every commodity is obtained merely for some utilitarian purpose, and
never as a commodity in itself.
In measuring the value of commodities by labor, M. Proudhon vaguely glimpses the
impossibility of excluding labor from this same measure, in so far as labor has a value, as
labor is a commodity. He has a misgiving that it is turning the wage minimum into the
natural and normal price of immediate labor, that is is accepting the existing state of
society. So, to get away from this fatal consequence, he faces about and asserts that labor
is not a commodity, that it cannot have value. He forgets that he himself has taken the
value of labor as a measure, he forgets that his whole system rests on labor as a
commodity, on labor which is bartered, bought, sold, exchanged for produce, etc., on
labor, in fact, which is an immediate source of income for the worker. He forgets
everything.
To save his system, he consents to sacrifice its basis.
Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas!
We now come to a new definition of "constituted value".
"Value is the proportional relation of the products which constitute wealth."
Let us note in the first place that the single phrase "relative or exchange value" implies
the idea of some relation in which products are exchanged reciprocally. By giving the
name "proportional relation" to this relation, no change is made in the relative value,
except in the expression. Neither the depreciation nor the enhancement of the value of a
product destroys its quality of being in some "proportional relation" with the other
products which constitute wealth.
Why then this new term, which introduces no new idea?
"Proportional relation" suggests many other economic relations, such as proportionality
in production, the true proportion between supply and demand, etc., and M. Proudhon is
thinking of all that when he formulates this didactic paraphrase of marketable value.
In the first place, the relative value of products being determined by the comparative
amount of labor used in the production of each of them, proportional relations, applied to
this special case, stand for the respective quota of products which can be manufactured in
a given time, and which in consequence are given in exchange for one another.
Let us see what advantage M. Proudhon draws from this proportional relation.
Everyone knows that when supply and demand are evenly balanced, the relative value of
any product is accurately determined by the quantity of labor embodied in it, that is to
say, that this relative value expresses the proportional relation precisely in the sense we
have just attached to it. M. Proudhon inverts the order of thing. Begin, he says, by
measuring the relative value of a product by the quantity of labor embodied in it, and
supply and demand will infallibly balance one another. Production will correspond to
consumption, the product will always be exchangeable. Its current price will express
exactly its true value. Instead of saying like everyone else: when the weather is fine, a lot
of people are to be seen going out for a walk. M. Proudhon makes his people go out for a
walk in order to be able to ensure them fine weather.
What M. Proudhon gives as the consequence of marketable value determined a priori by
labor time could be justified only by a law couched more or less in the following terms:
Products will in future be exchanged in the exact ratio of the labor time they have cost.
Whatever may be the proportion of supply to demand, the exchange of commodities will
always be made as if they had been produced proportionately to the demand. Let M.
Proudhon take it upon himself to formulate and lay down such a law, and we shall relieve
him of the necessity of giving proofs. If, on the other hand, he insists on justifying his
theory, not as a legislator, but as an economist, he will have to prove that the time needed
to create a commodity indicates exactly the degree of its utility and marks its proportional
relation to the demand, and in consequence, to the total amount of wealth. In this case, if [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]