THE METAPHYSICS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY 185
According to them the manufacturers are not the masters of wages because they are not masters of the price of the product, and they are not masters of the world market. By this argument they gave it to be understood that combinations were not necesary to drag from the masters an increase of wages. M. Proudhon, on the contrary, forbids them to combine for fear that combina- tion may be followed by a rise in wages, which would bring in its train a general scarcity. It is not necessary for us to point out that on one point there is perfect agreement between the foremen and M. Proudhon, that is, that a rise in wages is the equivalent of a rise in the price of products.
But is the fear of a scarcity the true cause of M. Proudhon’s ill-will towards combination? No. He cordially agrees with the foremen of Bolton because they determine value by supply and demand, and because they scarcely think of “constituted value,” of value passed to the state of constitution, of the constitution of value, comprising the “permanent exchangeability,” and all the other “proportionalities of relations” and “rela- tions of proportionalities,” flanked by Providence.
“For workers to strike is illegal, and it is not only the penal code which says so, it is the economic system, it is the necessity of the established order. . . . That each workman should have the free disposal of his hands and of his person, that can be tolerated, but that work- men should undertake by combination to do violence to monopoly, that is what society can never permit.” (Vol. I., pp. 235 and 237.)
M. Proudhon wishes to make an article of the penal code pass for a necessary and general result of bourgeois production.
In England trade combination is permitted by law,
