Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/87

 the hands of the consumer. The principle of equal exchanges, therefore, must, from its very nature, ensure universal labor." (Bray, pp. 67, 88, 89, 94, 109 and 110.) After having rebutted the objections of the economists to communism, Bray continues thus: "If a changed character be essential to the success of the social system of community in its most perfect form—and if, likewise, the present system affords no circumstances and no facilities for effecting the requisite change of character and preparing man for the higher and better state desired, it is evident that things must remain as they are… unless some preparatory steps be discovered and made use of—some movement partaking partly of the present and partly of the desired system, some intermediate resting-place, to which society may go with all its faults and all its follies, and from which it may move forward, imbued with those qualities and attributes without which the system of community and equality cannot as such have existence." (Bray, p. 134.)

"The whole movement would require only co-operation in its simplest form. Cost of production would in every instance determine value; and equal values would always exchange for equal values. If one person worked a whole week, and another worked only half a week, the first would receive double the remuneration of the last; but this extra pay of the one would not be at the expense of the other, nor would the loss incurred by the last man fall in any way upon the first. Each person would exchange the wages he individually received for commodities of the same value as his respective wages; and in no case could the gain of one man or one trade be a loss to another man or another trade. The labor of every individual would alone determine his gain and his losses."