Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/76

 particular employment which experiences the one or the other of these variations."

"If we cast our eyes over the markets of large towns we shall see with what regularity they are provided with all kinds of commodities, native and foreign, in the required quantity; and whatever difference there may be in demand as the effect of caprice, of taste, or by the variation of population; without there often being a glut by too abundant a supply, or excessive dearness through the poorness of supply compared to demand; we must admit that the principle which distributes capital in each branch of industry in the exact proportions required, is more powerful than is generally supposed." (Ricardo, vol. I., pp. 105 and 108.)

If M. Proudhon accepts the value of products as determined by labor time, he must equally accept the oscillatory movement which alone makes labor time the measure of value. There is no "relation of proportion" completely constituted, there is only a constituting movement.

We have seen in what sense it is correct to speak of the "proportion" as of a consequence of value determined by labor time. We will see now how this measure by time, called by M. Proudhon "law of proportion," transforms itself into a law of disproportion.

Every new invention which permits of the production in one hour of that which hitherto took two hours to produce depreciates all the homogeneous products already on the market. Competition compels the producer to sell the product of two hours as cheaply as the product of one hour. Competition realises the law according to which the relative value of a product is determined by the labor time necessary to produce it. Labor time,