System of Economical Contradictions; Or, The Philosophy of MiseryProudhon, P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph)
Philosophy
System of Economical Contradictions; Or, The Philosophy of Misery
Proudhon, P.-J. (Pierre-Joseph)
Economics
Where are the guarantees which they have received? What!
millions of men have sold their arms and parted with their
liberty without knowing the import of the contract; they have
engaged themselves upon the promise of continuous work and
adequate reward; they have executed with their hands what the
thought of the employers had conceived; they have become, by this
collaboration, associates in the enterprise: and when monopoly,
unable or unwilling to make further exchanges, suspends its
manufacture and leaves these millions of laborers without bread,
they are told to be RESIGNED! By the new processes they have
lost nine days of their labor out of ten; and for reward they are
pointed to the LASH OF NECESSITY flourished over them! Then, if
they refuse to work for lower wages, they are shown that they
punish themselves. If they accept the rate offered them, they
lose THAT NOBLE PRIDE, that taste for DECENT CONVENIENCES which
constitute the happiness and dignity of the workingman and
entitle him to the sympathies of the rich. If they combine to
secure an increase of wages, they are thrown into prison!
Whereas they ought to prosecute their exploiters in the courts,
on them the courts will avenge the violations of liberty of
commerce! Victims of monopoly, they will suffer the penalty due
to the monopolists! O justice of men, stupid courtesan, how
long, under your goddess's tinsel, will you drink the blood of
the slaughtered proletaire?
Monopoly has invaded everything,--land, labor, and the
instruments of labor, products and the distribution of pro ducts.
Political economy itself has not been able to avoid admitting it.
"You almost always find across your path," says M. Rossi, "some
monopoly. There is scarcely a product that can be regarded as
the pure and simple result of labor; accordingly the economic law
which proportions price to cost of production is never completely
realized. It is a formula which is profoundly MODIFIED by the
intervention of one or another of the monopolies to which the
instruments of production are subordinated.--Course in Political
Economy: Volume I., page 143.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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