is the period of general corruption; of universal venality, or, to speak in the terms of political economy, the time when everything moral or physical having become a saleable commodity, is conveyed to the market to be appraised at its proper value.
How can we explain this new and last phase of exchange—saleable value at its third power?
M. Proudhon would have an answer all ready: Put it that a person has "proposed to some other persons, his collaborators in various functions," to make of virtue, love, &c., a saleable value, to raise exchange-value to its third and last power. We thus see that the "historical and descriptive method" of M. Proudhon suffices for everything, it answers to everything, it explains everything. If it is above all a question of explaining historically "the generation of an economic idea," he supposes a man who proposes to other men, his collaborators in various functions, that they should accomplish this act of generation, and all is said.
Henceforth we accept the "generation" of exchange-value as an accomplished fact; it only remains now to explain the relation of exchange-value to utility-value. Listen to M. Proudhon.
"The economists have very well explained the double character of value; but what they have not set out with equal clearness is its contradictory nature; it is here that our criticism begins.. . . . It is a small matter to have signalised in utility-value and exchange-value this astonishing contrast, in which the economists are accustomed to see nothing but the most simple matter: it is necessary to show that this pretended simplicity hides a profound mystery which it is our duty to penetrate.. . . . In technical terms use-value and exchange-value are in inverse ratio the one to the other."
