Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/68

 thing by nature, but it becomes qualitatively defined by its object; that is to say, it becomes a reality by its product.

"But what need to insist? When the economist (read M. Proudhon) changes the name of things, vera rerum vocabula, he implicitly avows his impotence and puts himself out of court." (Proudhon I., 188.)

We have seen that M. Proudhon makes of the value of labor "the efficient cause" of the value of products to the extent that for him wages, the official name of the "value of labor," form the integral price of everything. That is why the objection of Say troubles him. In labor commodity, which is a frightful reality, he sees nothing but a grammatical ellipsis. The whole of existing society, then, based upon labor commodity, is henceforth based upon a poetic licence, on a figurative expression.

Does society desire to "eliminate all the inconveniences" which trouble it, it has only to eliminate all the ill-sounding terms. Let it change the language, and for that it has only to address itself to the Academy and ask it for a new edition of its dictionary. After all that we have seen, it is easy to understand why M. Proudhon, in a work on political economy, has had to enter into long dissertations on etymology and other parts of grammar. Thus, he has still to gravely discuss servus a servare. These philological dissertations have a profound meaning, an esoteric meaning; they form an essential part of the argument of M. Proudhon.

Labor, labor force, inasmuch as it is bought and sold, is a commodity the same as any other commodity, and has consequently an exchange-value. But the value of labor, or labor, as a commodity, does not produce, any more than the value of wheat, or wheat, as a commotitycommodity [sic], serves for nourishment.