After all, the determination of value by labor time -- the formula M. Proudhon gives us as the regenerating formula of the future -- is therefore merely the scientific expression of the economic relations of present-day society, as was clearly and precisely demonstrated by Ricardo long before M. Proudhon.
But does the "equalitarian" application of this formula at least belong to M. Proudhon? Was he the first to think of reforming society by transforming all men into actual workers exchanging equal amounts of labor?
Is it really for him to reproach the Communists -- these people devoid of all knowledge of political economy, these "obstinately foolish men", these "paradise dreamers" -- with not having found, before him, this "solution of the problem of the proletariat"?
Anyone who is in any way familiar with the trend of political economy in England cannot fail to know that almost all the Socialists in that country have, at different periods, proposed the equalitarian application of the Ricardian theory. We quote for M. Proudhon: Hodgskin, Political Economy , 1827; William Thompson, An Inquiry into the Principles of the Distribution of Wealth Most Conducive to Human Happiness , 1824;T. R. Edmonds, Practical Moral and Political Economy , 1828 [18], etc., etc., and four pages more of etc. We shall content ourselves with listening to an English Communist, Mr. Bray. We shall give the decisive passages in his remarkable work, Labor's Wrongs and Labor's Remedy , Leeds, 1839, and we shall dwell some time upon it, firstly, because Mr.
Bray is still little known in France, and secondly, because we think that we have discovered in him the key to the past, present and future works of M. Proudhon.
"The only way to arrive at truth is to go at once to First Principles....
Let us... go at once to the source from whence governments themselves have arisen.... By thus going to the origin of the thing, we shall find that every form of government, and every social and governmental wrong, owes its rise to the existing social system -- to the institution of property as it at present exists -- and that, therefore, if we would end our wrongs and our miseries at once and for ever, the present arrangements of society must be totally subverted.... By thus fighting them upon their own ground, and with their own weapons, we shall avoid that senseless clatter respecting 'visionaries' and 'theorists', with which they are so ready to assail all who dare move one step from that beaten track which 'by authority', has been pronounced to be the right one. Before the conclusions arrived at by such a course of proceeding can be overthrown, the economists must unsay or disprove those established truths and principles on which their own arguments are founded."(Bray, pp.17 and 41)
"It is labor alone which bestows value....
"Every man has an undoubted right to all that his honest labor can procure hiM. When he thus appropriates the fruits of his labor, he commits no injustice upon any other human being; for he interferes with no other man's right of doing the same with the produce of his labor....
"All these ideas of superior and inferior -- of master and man -- may be traced to the neglect of First Principles, and to the consequent rise of inequality of possessions; and such ideas will never be subverted, so long as this inequality is maintained. Men have hitherto blindly hoped to remedy the present unnatural state of things... by destroying existing inequality; but it will be shortly seen... that misgovernment is not a cause, but a consequence -- that it is not the creator, but the created -- that is is the offspring of inequality of possessions; and that the inequality of possessions is inseparably connected with our present social system."(Bray, pp.33, 36 and 37)
"Not only are the greatest advantages, but strict justice also, on the side of a system of equality.... Every man is a link, in the chain of effects -- the beginning of which is but an idea, and the end, perhaps, the production of a piece of cloth. Thus, although we may entertain different feelings towards the several parties, it does not follow that one should be better paid for his labor than another. The inventor will ever receive, in addition to his just pecuniary reward, that which genius only can obtain from us -- the tribune of our admiration....
"From the very nature of labor and exchange, strict justice not only requires that all exchangers should be mutually, but that they should likewise be equally, benefited. Men have only two things which they can exchange with each other, namely, labor, and the produce of labor....
