according to a professedly new formula which is only the theoretical expression of the real existing movement so well expounded by Ricardo. Ricardo takes for his point of departure existing society to demonstrate to us how it constitutes value. M. Proudhon takes for his point of departure constituted value, in order to constitute a new social world by means of this value. For him, M. Proudhon, constituted value must make a circuit and become the constituent for a world already fully constituted according to this mode of valuation. The determination of value by labor time is for Ricardo the law of exchange-value; for M. Proudhon it is the synthesis of use-value and exchange-value. The theory of value of Ricardo is the scientific interpretation of actual economic life; the theory of value of M. Proudhon is the utopian interpretation of the theory of Riacrdo. Ricardo proves the truth of his formula by drawing his conclusions from all the economic relations and in explaining by this means all the phenomena, even those which at first sight appear to contradict it, such as rent, the accumulation of capitals, and the connection between wages and profits; that is precisely what makes of his theory a scientific system. M. Proudhon, who has rediscovered this formula of Ricardo's by means of entirely arbitrary hypotheses, is compelled afterwards to seek for isolated economic facts which he tortures and falsifies, in order to make them serve as examples, applications already existing, of the beginnings of the realisation of his regenerating idea. (See our Section 3, "Application of Constituted Value.")
Let us now pass on to the conclusions which M. Proudhon draws from value constituted (by labor time).
― A given quantity of labor equals the product created by the same quantity of labor.
