Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/111

 much emphasis: "I have already shown in Chapter II., by the solution of the contradiction of value, that the advantage of every useful discovery is incomparably less for the inventor, whoever he may be, than for society. I have carried out the demonstration of this point with matehematical [sic] rigor!"

Let us return to the fiction of society personified, a fiction which has no other object than to prove the following simple truth: A new invention causing a larger quantity of commodities to be produced with the same amount of labor, results in a fall in the saleable value of the product. Society makes a profit then, not in obtaining more exchangeable values, but in obtaining more commodities for the same value. As to the inventor, competition causes his profit to fall successively to the general level of profits. Has M. Proudhon proved this proposition as well as he wished to do? No. That does not prevent him from reproaching the economists with having failed to make this demonstration. To prove to him the contrary we will only cite Ricardo and Lauderdale; Ricardo, the chief of the school which determines value by labor time, Lauderdale one of the most vigorous defenders of the determination of value by supply and demand. Both have developed the same thesis.

"In constantly augmenting the facility of production, we constantly diminish the value of some of the things already produced, although by the same means we not only add to the national wealth, but we increase the facility of producing for the future. As soon as, by means of machines, or by our knowledge of physics, we force natural agents to do the work which has previously been done by man, the value of this work falls in consequence. If it takes ten men to turn a corn-mill, and it is discovered that by means of wind or water the