"to his collaborators" a proposition of this kind, and how his collaborators have been led to accept it without any protest whatever.
M. Proudhon does not enter into these genealogical details. He simply gives to the fact of exchange a kind of historical cachet in presenting it under the form of a motion, which a third party has made, tending to establish exchange.
That is a sample of "the historical and descriptive method" of M. Proudhon, who professes a superb disdain for the "historical and descriptive method" of Adam Smith and Ricardo.
Exchange has its own history. It has passed through different phases.
There was a time, as in the Middle Ages, when only the superfluity, the excess of production over consumption, was exchanged.
There was, again, a time when not only the superfluity but all the products, the whole of industrial existence, entered into commerce, in which the whole production depended entirely upon exchange. How are we to explain this second phase of exchange—saleable value at its second power?
M. Proudhon would be prepared with an answer: Admit that a man has "proposed to other men, his collaborators in various functions," to raise saleable value to its second power.
Lastly, there comes a time when all that men have regarded as inalienable become objects of exchange, of traffic, and can be disposed of. It is the time in which even the things which until then had been communicated, but never exchanged; given, but never sold; acquired, but never bought—virtue, love, opinion, science, conscience, &c.—where all at last enter into commerce. It
