THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 143
either descriptive history or dialectic history, it is com- parative history. M. Proudhon establishes a comparison between the workman printer of to-day and the workman printer of the Middle Ages; between the workman of the Creusot ironworks and the country blacksmith; between the man of letters of our days and the man of letters of the Middle Ages; and he makes the balance lean to the side of those who appertain more or less to the division of labor such as the Middle Ages have constituted or transmitted it. He opposes the division of labor of one historical epoch to the division of labor of another historical epoch. Was this what M. Proudhon had to demonstrate? No. He ought to have shown us the in- conveniences of the division of labor in general, of the division of labor as category. But of what use is it further to dwell upon this part of M. Proudhon’s work, since a little further on we shall see him formally retract all these pretended developments himself?
“The first effect of divided labor,” continues M. Proudhon, “after the degradation of the mind, is the prolongation of the periods of work, which grow in in- verse ratio to the amount of intelligence exercised. .... But, as the duration of these periods cannot exceed six- teen or eighteen hours a day, from the moment when compensation cannot be taken by additional time it will be effected in the price, and wages will fall..... This is certain—and that is all we are concerned to note—that the universal conscience does not put at the same rate the work of an overseer and that of a laborer. There is, then, a necessity for a reduction in the price of the day’s work, so that the worker, after having been afflicted in his mind by a degrading function, should not fail to be also stricken in the body by the meagreness of the re- muneration.”
