Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/41

 the process which makes exchange-value of utility-value. It is important for us to halt with M. Proudhon at this act of transubstantiation. This is how this act is accomplished according to our author:

A large number of products are not found in nature, they are found at the end of industry. Suppose his needs exceed the spontaneous production of nature, man is forced to have recourse to industrial production. What is this production, in the supposition of M. Proudhon; What is its origin? A single man experiencing the want of a large number of things "cannot turn his hand to so many things." To have so many wants to satisfy supposes so many things to produce—there are no products without production—to have so many things to produce pre-supposes more than the hand of a single man already assisting in production. But from the moment that you suppose more than one hand assisting in production you have already supposed a whole system of production based on the sub-division of labor. Thus the need, such as M. Proudhon supposes it, itself pre-supposes the whole sub-division of labor. In supposing the sub-division of labor you have exchange, and consequently exchange-value. It would have been just as well to have supposed exchange-value in the first place.

But M. Proudhon prefers to make the circuit. Let us follow him in all his detours, to always return to the point of departure.

To leave the state of things in which each produces solitarily, and to arrive at exchange, "I address myself," says M. Proudhon, "to my collaborators in various functions." Then, it seems, I have some collaborators who all have various functions, without I and all the others, in order to arrive at such a state of things—always according to the supposition of M. Proudhon