For example, what is profit? That which remains for the manager after he has paid all the expenses.Now, the expenses consist of the labor performed and the materials consumed; or, in fine, wages.What, then, is the wages of a workingman? The least that can be given him; that is, we do not know.
What should be the price of the merchandise put upon the market by the manager? The highest that he can obtain; that is, again, we do not know.
Political economy prohibits the supposition that the prices of merchandise and labor can be fixed, although it admits that they can be estimated;
and that for the reason, say the economists, that estimation is essentially an arbitrary operation, which never can lead to sure and certain conclusions.
How, then, shall we find the relation between two unknowns which, according to political economy, cannot be determined? Thus political economy proposes insolvable problems; and yet we shall soon see that it must propose them, and that our century must solve them.That is why I said that the Academy of Moral Sciences, in offering for competition the question of the relation of profits and wages, spoke unconsciously, spoke prophetically.
But it will be said, Is it not true that, if labor is in great demand and laborers are scarce, wages will rise, while profits on the other hand will decrease; that if, in the press of competition, there is an excess of production, there will be a stoppage and forced sales, consequently no profit for the manager and a danger of idleness for the laborer; that then the latter will offer his labor at a reduced price; that, if a machine is invented, it will first extinguish the fires of its rivals; then, a monopoly established, and the laborer made dependent on the employer, profits and wages will be inversely proportional? Cannot all these causes, and others besides, be studied, ascertained, counterbalanced, etc.?
Oh, monographs, histories! -- we have been saturated with them since the days of Adam Smith and J.B.Say, and they are scarcely more than variations of these authors' words.
But it is not thus that the question should be understood, although the Academy has given it no other meaning.The relation of profits end wages should be considered in an absolute sense, and not from the inconclusive point of view of the accidents of commerce and the division of interests:
two things which must ultimately receive their interpretation.Let me explain myself.
Considering producer and consumer as a single individual, whose recompense is naturally equal to his product; then dividing this product into two parts, one which rewards the producer for his outlay, another which represents his profit, according to the axiom that all labor should leave an excess, -we have to determine the relation of one of these parts to the other.
This done, it will be easy to deduce the ratio of the fortunes of these two classes of men, employers and wage-laborers, as well as account for all commercial oscillations.This will be a series of corollaries to add to the demonstration.
Now, that such a relation may exist and be estimated, there must necessarily be a law, internal or external, which governs wages and prices; and since, in the present state of things, wages and prices vary and oscillate continually, we must ask what are the general facts, the causes, which make value vary and oscillate, and within what limits this oscillation takes place.
But this very question is contrary to the accepted principles; for whoever says oscillation necessarily supposes a mean direction toward which value's centre of gravity continually tends; and when the Academy asks that we determine the oscillations of profit and wages, it asks thereby that we determine value.Now that is precisely what the gentlemen of the Academy deny: they are unwilling to admit that, if value is variable, it is for that very reason determinable; that variability is the sign and condition of determinability.They pretend that value, ever varying, can never be determined.This is like maintaining that, given the number of oscillations of a pendulum per second, their amplitude, and the latitude and elevation of the spot where the experiment is performed, the length of the pendulum cannot be determined because the pendulum is in motion.Such is political economy's first article of faith.
As for socialism, it does not appear to have understood the question, or to be concerned about it.Among its many organs, some simply and merely put aside the problem by substituting division for distribution, -- that is, by banishing number and measure from the social organism: others relieve themselves of the embarrassment by applying universal suffrage to the wages question.It is needless to say that these platitudes find dupes by thousands and hundreds of thousands.
The condemnation of political economy has been formulated by Malthus in this famous passage: --
A man who is born into a world already occupied, his family unable to support him, and society not requiring his labor, -- such a man, I say, has not the least right to claim any nourishment whatever: he is really one too many on the earth.At the great banquet of Nature there is no plate laid for him.Nature commands him to take himself away, and she will not be slow to put her order into execution.(1*)
This then is the necessary, the fatal, conclusion of political economy, -- a conclusion which I shall demonstrate by evidence hitherto unknown in this field of inquiry, -- Death to him who does not possess!
In order better to grasp the thought of Malthus, let us translate it into philosophical propositions by stripping it of its rhetorical gloss:
--
"Individual liberty, and property, which is its expression, are economical data; equality and solidarity are not.
"Under this system, each one by himself, each one for himself: labor, like all merchandise, is subject to fluctuation: hence the risks of the proletariat.
