Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/42

 having abandoned the solitary and unsocial position of Robinson Crusoe. The collaborators, and the diverse functions, the division of labor and the exchange which it indicates are all existing already.

To summarise: I have wants based upon the division of labor and on the exchange of commodities. In supposing these wants M. Proudhon finds that he has supposed exchange, exchange-value, of which he precisely proposes to "note the generation with more care than the other economists."

M. Proudhon could just as well have inverted the order of things without by so doing inverting the justness of his conclusions. To explain exchange-value there must be exchange. To explain exchange there must be division of labor. To explain the division of labor there must be wants which necessitate the division of labor. To explain these wants it is necessary to "suppose" them, which is not to deny them, contrary to the first axiom of M. Proudhon's prologue: "To suppose God is to deny him." (Prologue, p. ).

How does M. Proudhon, for whom the division of labor is supposed known, take this to explain exchange-value, which for him is always the unknown?

"A man" sets out "to propose to other men, his collaborators in various functions," to establish exchange and to make a distinction between use-value and exchangeable value. In accepting this proposed distinction the collaborators have left to M. Proudhon no other "care" than to take account of the fact, to mark, to "note" in his treatise of political economy "the generation of the idea of value." But he owes it to us, always, to explain "the generation" of this proposition, to tell us, finally, how this single solitary man, this Robinson Crusoe, has had suddenly the idea of making