Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/75

 Proudhon, the apology for a society without comprehending it.

In a future society, where the antagonism of classes will have ceased, where there will no longer be classes, use will no longer be determined by the minimum time of production; but the time of social production which will be devoted to the various objects will be determined by their degree of social utility.

To return to the thesis of M. Proudhon: From the moment that the labor time necessary to the production of an object is not the expression of its degree of utility, the exchange-value of this object, determined beforehand by the labor time embodied in it, can never regulate the just relation of supply and demand, that is to say, the relation of the proportion in the sense which M. Proudhon for the moment attaches to it.

It is not the sale of any product whatever at the price of its cost of production which constitutes "the relation of proportion" of supply and demand, or the proportional quota of this product relatively to the whole of production; it is the variations of demand and of supply which fix for the producer the quantity in which it is necessary to produce a given product in order to get in exchange at least the cost of production. And as these variations are continued, there is also a continual movement of withdrawal and of application of capitals with regard to the different branches of industry.

"It is only by reason of similar variations that capitals are devoted precisely in the required proportion, and not beyond, to the production of the different commodities for which there is a demand. By the rise or fall of prices profits rise above or fall below their mean level, and by that capital is attracted to or repelled from the