Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/90

 to obtain the position of Paul, a competition in idleness.

Ah well! What has the exchange of equal quantities of labor given us? Overproduction, depreciation, overwork followed by enforced idleness; in fine, the economic relations such as we see them in existing society, less the competition of labor.

But no, we deceive ourselves. There would be still an expedient by which the new society, the society of Peters and Pauls, could be saved. Peter might eat all alone the product of the six hours of labor which remained to him. But from the moment in which there is no more exchanging in order to have a product, there is no longer production in order to exchange, and all the supposition of a society founded on exchange and the division of labor falls to the ground. We should have saved the equality of exchanges, only through the cessation of exchange: Paul and Peter would have arrived at the condition of Robinson Crusoe.

Then if we imagine all the members of society to be workers, the exchange of equal quantities of hours of labor is only possible on condition that we understand beforehand the number of hours necessary to employ in material production. But such an understanding denies individual exchange.

We shall still arrive at the same result if we take for a starting point, not the distribution of the products created, but the act of production. In the great industry Peter is not free to fix for himself the time of his labor, because the labor of Peter is nothing without the co-operation of all the Peters and all the Pauls in the establishment. It is this which clearly explains the obstinate resistance of the English manufacturer to the Ten Hours Bill. They knew very well that a reduction of two hours' labor given to the women and children