Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/71

 of the proportion, applied to this special use, signifies the respective quota of products which can be manufactured in a given time, and which, consequently, would be given in exchange.

Let us see what advantage M. Proudhon draws from this relation of proportion. Everybody knows that when supply and demand are equal the relative value of any product whatever is exactly determined by the quantity of labor embodied in it—that is to say, that this relative value expresses the relation of the proportion precisely in the sense in which we have just given it. M. Proudhon reverses the order of things. Begin, says he, by measuring the relative value of a product by the quantity of labor embodied in it, and then supply and demand will infallibly equalise themselves. Production will correspond with consumption; the product will be always exchangeable. Its current price will express precisely its exact value. Instead of saying, with everybody else, that when the weather is fine one sees many people out walking, M. Proudhon makes his people walk out in order to ensure fine weather.

What M. Proudhon gives as the consequence of saleable value determined à priori by labor time could only be justified by a law formulated in almost these terms:

Products will henceforth be exchanged in exact ratio to the labor time they have cost. Whatever may be the proportion between supply and demand, the exchange of commodities will be always as if they had been produced proportionately to the demand.

Let M. Proudhon take it on himself to formulate and to make such a law, and we will pass the proofs to him. If he intends on the contrary to justify his theory, not as legislator, but as economist, he will have to prove that the time which is necessary to create a commodity in-