Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/105

 explanation. "If we say that the prices of all commodities rise or fall, we always exclude one commodity or another, the commodity excluded being generally either money or labor." ("Encyclopædia Metropolitaine, or Universal Dictionary of Knowledge," vol. IV., the article on Political Economy by Senior, London. 1836.) See also, on this expression, John Stuart Mill, "Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy," London, 1844, and Tooke, "A History of Prices, &c.," London, 1838.

Let us now pass to the second application of "constituted value," and other proportionalities, whose single failing is that they are so little proportioned, and see if M. Proudhon is more happy in that than in the monetisation of sheep.

"An axiom generally admitted by the economists is that all labor must leave a surplus. This proposition is for me a universal and absolute truth: it is the corollary of the law of proportion, which may be regarded as the summary of the whole science of economy. But, I must crave the pardon of the economists, the principle that all labor must leave a surplus has, in their theory, no meaning, and is not susceptible of demonstration." (Proudhon.)

In order to prove that all labor must leave a surplus, M. Proudhon personifies society; he makes a personal society, a society which is not, so much as it is necessary, the society of persons, since it has its laws apart, having nothing in common with the people composing society, and its "own intelligence," which is not the common intelligence of men but an intelligence which has no common sense. M. Proudhon reproaches the economists with not having understood the personality of this collective being. We are pleased to oppose to him the