Page:Karl Marx - The Poverty of Philosophy - (tr. Harry Quelch) - 1913.djvu/85

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78
The Poverty of Philosophy

to giving him nothing for something. . . . . The whole transaction, therefore, between the producer and the capitalist is a palpable deception, a mere farce; it is, in fact, in thousands of instances, no more than a barefaced though a legalised robbery." (J. F. Bray, pp. 45, 48, 49 and 50.)

"The gain of the employer will never cease to be the loss of the employed, until the exchanges between the parties are equal; and exchanges never can be equal while society is divided into capitalists and producers—the last living upon their labor, and the first bloating upon the profit of that labor."

"It is plain," continues Bray, "that you may establish whatever form of government you will . . . . that you may talk of morality and brotherly love . . . . no such reciprocity can exist where there are unequal exchanges, and inequality of rewards for equal services.. . . . Inequality of exchanges, as being the cause of inequality of possessions, is the secret enemy that devours us."

"It has been deduced, also, from a consideration of the intention and end of society, not only that all men should labor, and thereby become exchangers, but that equal values should always exchange for equal values—and that as the gain of one man ought never to be the loss of another, value should ever be determined by cost of production. But we have seen that, under the present arrangements of society, all men do not labor . . . . that the gain of the capitalist and the rich man is always the loss of the workman—that this result will invariably take place, and the poor man be left entirely at the mercy of the rich man, so long as there is inequality of exchanges—and that equality of exchanges can be insured only under social arrangements in which labor is universal. . . . . If exchanges were equal, the wealth of