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up a struggle between these two chimerical personages. But in the real world, things
happen otherwise. The competition among the suppliers and the competition among the
demanders form a necessary part of the struggle between buyers and sellers, of which
marketable value is the result.
After having eliminated competition and the cost of production, M. Proudhon can at his
ease reduce the formula of supply and demand to an absurdity.
"Supply and demand," he says, "are merely two ceremonial forms that serve to bring use
value and exchange value face to face, and to lead to their reconciliation. They are the
two electric poles which, when connected, must produce the phenomenon of affinity
called exchange."
(Volume I, pp.49 and 50)
One might as well say that exchange is merely a "ceremonial form" for introducing the
consumer to the object of consumption. One might as well say that all economic relations
are "ceremonial forms" serving immediate consumption as go-betweens. Supply and
demand are neither more nor less relations of a given production than are individual
exchanges.
What, then, does all M. Proudhon's dialectic consist in? In the substitition for use value
and exchange value, for supply and demand, of abstract and contradictory notions like
scarcity and abundance, utility and estimation, one producer and one consumer, both of
them knights of free will.
And what was he aiming at?
At arranging for himself a means of introducing later on one of the elements he had set
aside, the cost of production, as the synthesis of use value and exchange value. And it is
thus that in his eyes the cost of production constitutes synthetic value or constituted
value.
Next: Constituted Value or Synthetic Value
The Poverty of Philosophy
Karl Marx
The Poverty of Philosophy
Chapter One: A Scientific Discovery
2. Constituted Value or Synthetic Value
Value (marketable value) is the corner-stone of the economic structure. "Constituted"
value is the corner-stone of the system of economic contradictions.
What then is this "constituted value" which is all M. Proudhon has discovered in political
economy?
Once utility is admitted, labor is the source of all value. The measure of labor is time. The
relative value of products is determined by the labor time required for their production.
Price is the monetary expression of the relative value of a product. Finally, the the
constituted value of a product is purely and simply the value which is constituted by the
labor time incorporated in it.
Just as Adam Smith discovered the division of labor, so he, M. Proudhon, claims to have
discovered "constituted value". This is not exactly "something unheard of", but then it
must be admitted that there is nothing unheard of in any discovery of economic science.
M. Proudhon, who fully appreciates the importance of his own invention, seeks
nevertheless to tone down the merit therefore "in order to reassure the reader to as his
claims to originality, and to win over minds whose timidity renders them little favorable
to new ideas". But in apportioning the contribution made by each of his predecessors to
the understanding of value, he is forced to confess openly that the largest portion, the
lion's share, of the merit falls to himself.
"The synthetic idea of value had been vaguely perceived by Adam Smith.... But with
Adam Smith the idea of value was entirely intuitive. Now, society does not change its
habits merely on the strength of intuitions: its decisions are made only on the authority of
facts. The antinomy had to be stated more palpably and more clearly: J.B. Say was its
chief interpreter."
[I 66]
Here, in a nutshell, is the history of the discovery of synthetic value: Adam Smith
vague intuition; J. B. Say antinomy; M. Proudhon constituting and "constituted"
truth. And let there be no mistake about it: all the other economists, from Say to
Proudhon, have merely been trudging along in the rut of antimony.
"It is incredible that for the last 40 years so many men of sense should have fumed and
fretted at such a simple idea. But no, values are compared without there being any point
of comparison between them and with no unit of measurements; this, rather than embrace
the revolutionary theory of equality, is what the economists of the 19th century are
resolved to uphold against all comers. What will posterity say about it?"
(Vol.I, p.68)
Posterity, so abruptly invoked, will begin by getting muddled over the chronology. It is
bound to ask itself: are not Ricardo and his school economists of the 19th century?
Ricardo's system, putting as a principle that "the relative value of commodities
corresponds exclusively to their production", dates from 1817. Ricardo is the head of a
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