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be evenly balanced; for the cost of production is supposed to express the true relation
between supply and demand.
Actually, M. Proudhon sets out to prove that labor time needed to create a product
indicates its true proportional relation to needs, so that the things whose production costs
the least time are the most immediately useful, and so on, step by step. The mere
production of a luxury object proves at once, according to this doctrine, that society has
spare time which allows it to satisfy a need for luxury.
M. Proudhon finds the very proof of his thesis in the observation that the most useful
things cost the least time to produce, that society always begins with the easiest industries
and successively "starts on the production of objects which cost more labor time and
which correspond to a higher order of needs."
M. Proudhon borrows from M. Dunoyer the example of extractive industry 
fruit-gathering, pasturage, hunting, fishing, etc.  which is the simplest, the least costly
of industries, and the one by which man began "the first day of his second creation". The
first day of his first creation is recorded in Genesis, which shows God as the world's first
manufacturer.
Things happen in quite a different way from what M. Proudhon imagines. The very
moment civilization begins, production begins to be founded on the antagonism of orders,
estates, classes, and finally on the antagonism of accumulated labor and actual labor. No
antagonism, no progress. This is the law that civilization has followed up to our days. Till
now the productive forces have been developed by virtue of this system of class
antagonisms. To say now that, because all the needs of all the workers were satisfied,
men could devote themselves to the creation of products of a higher order  to more
complicated industries  would be to leave class antagonism out of account and turn all
historical development upside down. It is like saying that because, under the Roman
emperors, muraena were fattened in artificial fishponds, therefore there was enough to
feed abundantly the whole Roman population. Actually, on the contrary, the Roman
people had not enough to buy bread with, while the Roman aristocrats had slaves enough
to throw as fodder to the muraena.
The price of food has almost continuously risen, while the price of manufactured and
luxury goods has almost continuously fallen. Take the agricultural industry itself; the
most indispensable objects, like corn, meat, etc., rise in price, while cotton, sugar, coffee,
etc., fall in a surprising proportion. And even among comestibles proper, the luxury
articles, like artichokes, asparagus, etc., are today relatively cheaper than foodstuffs of
prime necessity. In our age, the superfluous is easier to produce than the necessary.
Finally, at different historical epochs, the reciprocal price relations are not only different,
but opposed to one another. In the whole of the Middle Ages, agricultural products were
relatively cheaper than manufactured products; in modern times they are in inverse ratio.
Does this mean that the utility of agricultural products has diminished since the Middle
Ages?
The use of products is determined by the social conditions in which the consumers find
themselves placed, and these conditions themselves are based on class antagonism.
Cotton, potatoes and spirits are objects of the most common use. Potatoes have
engendered scrofula; cotton has to a great extent driven out flax and wool, although wool
and flax are, in many cases, of greater utility, if only from the point of view of hygiene;
finally, spirits have got the upper hand of beer and wine, although spirits used as an
alimentary substance are everywhere recognized to be poison. For a whole century,
governments struggled in vain against the European opium; economics prevailed, and
dictated its orders to consumption.
Why are cotton, potatoes and spirits the pivots of bourgeois society? Because the least
amount of labor is needed to produce them, and, consequently, they have the lowest
price. Why does the minimum price determine the maximum consumption? Is it by any
chance because of the absolute utility of these objects, their intrinsic utility, their utility
insomuch as they correspond, in the most useful manner, in the needs of the worker as a
man, and not to the man as a worker? No, it is because in a society founded on poverty
the poorest products have the fatal prerogative of being used by the greatest number.
To say now that because the least costly things are in greater use, they must be of greater
utility, is saying that the wide use of spirits, because of their low cost of production, is the
most conclusive proof of their utility; it is telling the proletarian that potatoes are more [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]