Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/108

 the speed of the railway is entirely social, and each individual participates in it only in a minimum proportion (remember we are dealing here only with the transport of merchandise), while the loss falls directly upon the consumer personally. A social benefit of four hundred represents for the individual, if the society only number a million men, four ten-thousandths; while a loss of thirty-three per cent. for the consumer would suppose a social deficit of thirty-three millions." (Proudhon.)

M. Proudhan [sic] not only expresses a quadrupled speed by four hundred per cent. of the primitive celerity, but he sets up a relation between the percentage of speed and the percentage of profit, and establishes a proportion between two conditions which, although they may be separately estimated at so much per cent., are nevertheless incommensurable with each other: This is to establish a proportion between the percentages and to leave out the denominations. Percentages are always percentages. Ten per cent. and four hundred per cent. are commensurable, they are to each other as ten is to four hundred. Then, concludes M. Proudron [sic], a profit of ten per cent. is worth forty times less than a quadrupled speed. In order to save appearances he says that, for society, time is money. This error arises from the fact that he confusedly recollects that there is a relation between value and labor time, and he has nothing to do but assimilate labor time with the time of transport; that is to say, he identifies the drivers, guards and firemen, whose labor time is nothing but the time of transport, with the whole of society, For this master stroke, behold speed become capital, and in such case he is quite right to say: "A benefit of four hundred per cent. would be sacrificed to a loss of thirty-five per cent."