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.He forgets that he himself has taken thevalue of labor as a measure, he forgets that his whole system rests on labor as acommodity, on labor which is bartered, bought, sold, exchanged for produce, etc., onlabor, in fact, which is an immediate source of income for the worker.He forgetseverything.To save his system, he consents to sacrifice its basis.Et propter vitam vivendi perdere causas!We now come to a new definition of "constituted value"."Value is the proportional relation of the products which constitute wealth."Let us note in the first place that the single phrase "relative or exchange value" impliesthe idea of some relation in which products are exchanged reciprocally.By giving thename "proportional relation" to this relation, no change is made in the relative value,except in the expression.Neither the depreciation nor the enhancement of the value of aproduct destroys its quality of being in some "proportional relation" with the otherproducts which constitute wealth.Why then this new term, which introduces no new idea?"Proportional relation" suggests many other economic relations, such as proportionalityin production, the true proportion between supply and demand, etc., and M.Proudhon isthinking of all that when he formulates this didactic paraphrase of marketable value.In the first place, the relative value of products being determined by the comparativeamount of labor used in the production of each of them, proportional relations, applied tothis special case, stand for the respective quota of products which can be manufactured ina given time, and which in consequence are given in exchange for one another.Let us see what advantage M.Proudhon draws from this proportional relation.Everyone knows that when supply and demand are evenly balanced, the relative value ofany product is accurately determined by the quantity of labor embodied in it, that is tosay, that this relative value expresses the proportional relation precisely in the sense wehave just attached to it.M.Proudhon inverts the order of thing.Begin, he says, bymeasuring the relative value of a product by the quantity of labor embodied in it, andsupply and demand will infallibly balance one another.Production will correspond toconsumption, the product will always be exchangeable.Its current price will expressexactly its true value.Instead of saying like everyone else: when the weather is fine, a lotof people are to be seen going out for a walk.M.Proudhon makes his people go out for awalk in order to be able to ensure them fine weather.What M.Proudhon gives as the consequence of marketable value determined a priori by labor time could be justified only by a law couched more or less in the following terms:Products will in future be exchanged in the exact ratio of the labor time they have cost.Whatever may be the proportion of supply to demand, the exchange of commodities willalways be made as if they had been produced proportionately to the demand.Let M.Proudhon take it upon himself to formulate and lay down such a law, and we shall relievehim of the necessity of giving proofs.If, on the other hand, he insists on justifying histheory, not as a legislator, but as an economist, he will have to prove that the time neededto create a commodity indicates exactly the degree of its utility and marks its proportionalrelation to the demand, and in consequence, to the total amount of wealth.In this case, ifa product is sold at a price equal to its cost of production, supply and demand will alwaysbe evenly balanced; for the cost of production is supposed to express the true relationbetween supply and demand.Actually, M.Proudhon sets out to prove that labor time needed to create a productindicates its true proportional relation to needs, so that the things whose production coststhe least time are the most immediately useful, and so on, step by step.The mereproduction of a luxury object proves at once, according to this doctrine, that society hasspare time which allows it to satisfy a need for luxury.M.Proudhon finds the very proof of his thesis in the observation that the most usefulthings cost the least time to produce, that society always begins with the easiest industriesand successively "starts on the production of objects which cost more labor time andwhich correspond to a higher order of needs."M.Proudhon borrows from M.Dunoyer the example of extractive industry fruit-gathering, pasturage, hunting, fishing, etc. which is the simplest, the least costlyof industries, and the one by which man began "the first day of his second creation".Thefirst day of his first creation is recorded in Genesis, which shows God as the world's firstmanufacturer
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