After having set up this strange proposition as a matehematician, he gives us the explanation as an economist.
"A social benefit equal to four hundred represents for the individual, if the society is only one of a million of men, four ten-thousandths." Certainly; but it is not a question of four hundred, it is a question of four hundred per cent., and a benefit of four hundred per cent. represents neither more nor less than four hundred per cent. for the individual. Whatever may be the capital, the dividends will be always in the proportion of four hundred per cent. What does M. Proudhon do? He takes the percentage for the capital, and, as though he feared that his confusion was not sufficiently manifest, sufficiently "clear," he continues:—
"A loss of thirty-three per cent. for the consumer would suppose a social deficit of thirty-three millinns." Thirty-three per cent. of loss for the consumer would remain a loss of thirty-three per cent. for a million consumers. How can M. Proudhon say afterwards, definitely, that the social deficit, in the case of a loss of thirty-three per cent. would amount to thirty-three millions when he does not know either the social capital or even that of a single one of those interested? Thus, it is not sufficient for M. Proudhon to have confounded the capital and the percentage, but he must go further still, and identify the capital put into an undertaking with the number of those concerned. "Let us suppose, to make the matter still clearer," a determined capital. A social profit of four hundred per cent. shared among a million participants, supposing each to be interested to the extent of a franc, would mean four francs profit per head, and not 0.0004, as M. Proudhon pretends. In the same way a loss of thirty-three per cent. for each of the participants would represent a social deficit of 330,000
