[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
namely, that the profits and losses of society are not in inverse ratio to the profits and
losses of individuals.
Having rectified these simple errors of pure calculation, let us take a look at the
consequences which we would arrive at, if we admitted this relation between speed and
capital in the case of railways, as M. Proudhon gives it minus the mistakes in
calculation. Let us suppose that a transport four times as rapid costs four times as much;
this transport would not yield less profit than cartage, which is four times slower and
costs a quarter the amount. Thus, if cartage takes 18 centimes, rail transport could take 72
centimes. This would be, according to "the rigor of mathematics", the consequence of M.
Proudhon's suppositions always minus his mistakes in calculation. But here he is all of
a sudden telling us the if, instead of 72 centimes, rail transport takes only 25, it would
instantly lose all its consignments. Decidedly we should have to go back to the van, to the
primitive waggon even. Only, if we have any advice to give M. Proudhon, it is not to
forget, in his Programme of the Progressive Association, to divide by 100. But, alas! it is
scarcely to be hoped that our advice will be listened to, for M. Proudhon is so delighted
with his "progressive association", that he cries most emphatically:
"I have already shown in Chapter II, by the solution of the antinomy of value, that the
advantage of every useful discovery is incomparably less for the inventor, whatever he
may do, than for society. I have carried the demonstration in regard to this point in the
rigor of mathematics!"
Let us return to the fiction of the person, Society, a fiction which has no other aim than
that of proving this simple truth that a new invention which enables a given amount of
labor to produce a greater number of commodities, lowers the marketable value of the
product. Society, then, makes a profit, not by obtaining more exchange values, but by
obtaining more commodities for the same value. As for the inventor, competition makes
his profit fall successively to the general level of profits. Has M. Proudhon proved this
proposition as he wanted to? No. This does not prevent him from reproaching the
economists with failure to prove it. To prove to him on the contrary that they have proved
it, we shall cite only Ricardo and Lauderdale Ricardo, the head of the school which
determines value by labor time, and Lauderdale, one of the most uncompromising
defenders of the determination of value by supply and demand. Both have expounded the
same proposition:
"By constantly increasing the facility of production, we constantly diminish the value of
some of the commodities before produced, though by the same means we not only add to
the national riches, but also to the power of future production.... As soon as by the aid of
machinery, or by the knowledge of natural philosophy, you oblige natural agents to do
the work which was before done by man, the exchangeable value of such work falls
accordingly. If 10 men turned a corn mill, and it be discovered that by the assistance of
wind, or of water, the labor of these 10 men may be spared, the flour which is the
produce partly of the work performed by the mill, would immediately fall in value, in
proportion to the quantity of labor saved; and the society would be richer by the
commodities which the labor of the 10 men could produce, the funds destined for their
maintenance being in no degree impaired."
(Ricardo [II 59])
Lauderdale, in his turn, says:
In every instance where capital is so employed as to produce a profit, it uniformly arises,
either from its supplanting a portion of labor, which would otherwise be performed by
the hand of man; or from its performing a portion of labor, which is beyond the reach
of the personal exertion of man to accomplish. The small profit which the proprietors of
machinery generally acquire, when compared with the wages of labor, which the machine
supplants, may perhaps create a suspicion of the rectitude of this opinion. Some
fire-engines, for instance, draw more water from a coalpit in one day than could be
conveyed on the shoulder of 300 men, even assisted by the machinery of buckets; and a
fire-engine undoubtedly performs its labor at a much smaller expense than the amount of
the wages of those whose labor it thus supplants. This is, in truth, the case with all
machinery. All machines must execute the labor that was antecedently performed at a
cheaper rate than it could be done by the hand of man....
If such a privilege is given for the invention of a machine, which performs, by the labor
of one man, a quantity of work that used to take the labor of four; as the possession of the
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]