Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/54

 to employ in order to produce them. Price is the monetary expression of the relative value of a product. Finally the constituted value of a product is simply the value which is constituted by the labor time embodied in it.

Just as Adam Smith discovered the division of labor, in the same way M. Proudhon claims to have discovered "constituted value." This is not precisely "something unheard of," but then it must also be admitted that there is nothing unheard of in any discovery in economic science. M. Proudhon, who feels all the importance of his discovery, nevertheless seeks to attenuate its merit, "in order to reassure the reader with regard to his pretensions to originality and to conciliate those whose timidity rendesrenders [sic] them but little favorable to new ideas." But, while admitting that each of his predecessors has done something for the appreciation of value, he is compelled to loudly proclaim that it is to him that the greater part, the lion's share, belongs.

"The synthetical idea of value was vaguely perceived by Adam Smith. But this idea of value was entirely intuitive with Adam Smith; nevertheless, society does not change its habits on the faith of intuitions, it decides only on the authority of facts. It is necessary that the contradiction should be expressed in a clearer and more sensible manner. J. B. Say was its principal exponent."

There is the whole history of the discovery of synthetical value—to Adam Smith vague intuition, to J. B. Say contradiction, to M. Proudhon the constituent and "constituted" truth. And let there be no mistake; all the other economists, from Say to Proudhon, have done nothing but wander in the beaten path of contradiction.

"It is incredible that so many men of sense should for forty years have struggled against such a simple idea.