Karl Marx Poverty of Philosophy

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absurd hypothesis that, "if wages rose generally, the price of every thing else would rise".
Furthermore, if we find the phrase in question in works on political economy, we also
find as explanation of it.
"When one speaks of the price of all commodities going up or down, one always
excludes some one commodity going up or down. The excluded commodity is, in
general, money or labor."
(Encyclopedia Metropolitana or Universal Dictionary of
Knowledge, Vol.IV, Article "Political Economy", by [N. W.]
Senior, London 1836. Regarding the phrase under discussion,
see also J. St. Mill: Essays on Some Unsettled Questions
of Political Economy, London 1844, and Tooke: A History of
Prices, etc., London 1838.) [Full reference is Th. Tooke,
A History of Prices, and of the State of the Circulation,
from 1793 to 1837, Vols.I-II, London, 1838]
Let us pass now to the second application of "constituted value", and of other proportions
whose only defect is their lack of proportion. And let us see whether M. Proudhon is
happier here than in the monetarization of sheep.
"An axiom generally admitted by economists is that all labor must leave a surplus. In my
opinion this proposition is universally and absolutely true: it is the corollary of the law of
proportion, which may be regarded as the summary of the whole of economic science.
But, if the economists will permit me to say so, the principle that all labor must leave a
surplus is meaningless according to their theory, and is not susceptible of any
demonstration."
(Proudhon [I 73])
To prove that all labor must leave a surplus, M. Proudhon personifies society; he turns it
into a person, Society a society which is not by any means a society of persons, since
it has its law apart, which have nothing in common with the persons of which society is
composed, and its "own intelligence", which is not the intelligence of common men, but
an intelligence devoid of common sense. M. Proudhon reproaches the economists with
not having understood the personality of this collective being. We have pleasure in
confronting him with the following passage from an American economist, who accuses
the economists of just the opposite:
"The moral entity the grammatical being called a nation, has been clothed in attributes
that have no real existence except in the imagination of those who metamorphose a word
into a thing.... This has given rise to many difficulties and to some deplorable
misunderstanding in political economy."
(Th. Cooper, Lectures on the Elements of
Political Economy, Columbia 1826)
[The first edition of the book was published
in Colombia in 1826. A second, enlarged
edition appeared in London in 1831.]
"This principle of surplus labor," continues M. Proudhon, "is true of individuals only
because it emanates from society, which thus confers on them the benefit of its own
laws."
[I 75]
Does M. Proudhon mean thereby merely that the production of the social individual
exceeds that of the isolated individual? Is M. Proudhon referring to this excess of the
production of associated individuals over that of non-associated individuals? If so, we
could quote for him a hundred economists who have expressed this simple truth without
any of the mysticism with which M. Proudhon surrounds himself. This, for example, is
what Mr. Sadler says:
"Combined labor produces results which individual exertion could never accomplish. As
mankind, therefore, multiply in number, the products of their united industry would
greatly exceed the amount of any mere arithmetical addition calculated on such an
increase.... In the mechanical arts, as well as in pursuits of science, a man may achieve
more in a day... than a solitary... individual could perform in his whole life.... Geometry
says... that the whole is only equal to the sum of all its parts; as applied to the subject
before us, this axiom would be false. Regarding labor, the great pillar of human
existence, it may be said that the entire product of combined exertion almost infinitely
exceeds all which individual and disconnected efforts could possibly accomplish."
(T.Sadler, The Law of Population, London 1830)
[ Vol.I, pp.83 and 84 ]
To return to M. Proudhon. Surplus labor, he says, is explained by the person, Society.
The life of this person is guided by laws, the opposite of those which govern the activities
of man as an individual. He desires to prove this by "facts".
"The discovery of an economic process can never provide the inventor with a profit equal
to that which he procures for society.... It has been remarked that railway enterprises are
much less a source of wealth for the contractors than for the state.... The average cost of
transporting commodities by road is 18 centimes per ton per kilometre, from the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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