Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/118

 workpeople employed in England in the same industry, three years of prosperity out of ten.

As to the temporary participation in the growth of public wealth, that is different. The fact of the temporary participation is explained by the theory of the economists. It is the confirmation of that theory and not the "condemnation," as M. Proudhon says. If there was anything to condemn it would certainly be the system of M. Proudhon, which, as we have demonstrated, would reduce the worker to the minimum wage, in spite of the growth of riches. It is only by reducing the worker to the minimum wage that he could make an application of the "exact proportion" of values, of "value constituted"—by labor time. It is because wages, in consequence of competition, oscillate above and below the price of the necessaries of life essential to the sustentation of the worker that he can not only participate, to however small a degree, in the development of the collective wealth, but also that he can perish of want. There is the whole theory of the economists, which sets up no illusions.

After his long divagations on the subject of railways, of Prometheus and of the new society to be reconstituted on "constituted value," M. Proudhon reflects; emotion overcomes him, and in a paternal tone he cries:

"I adjure the economists to question themselves a moment, in the silence of their hearts, far from the prejudices which disturb them and without regard to the employments which occupy, or which await them, to the interests which they serve so ill, to the approbation to which they aspire, or to the distinctions which their vanity craves; that they should say if to this day the principle that all labor must leave a surplus has been apparent to them with this chain of preliminaries and of consequences that we have raised."