seigneurs, prebendaries, &c. enjoyed these rights, were neither more nor less than proprietors. To defend property to-day is to condemn the Revolution.
second proposition.
Property is impossible, because wherever it exists Production costs more than it is worth.
The preceding proposition was legislative in its nature; this one is economical. It serves to prove that property, which originates in violence, results in waste.
“Production,” says Say, “is exchange on a large scale. To render the exchange productive the value of the whole amount of service must be balanced by the value of the product. If this condition is not complied with, the exchange is unequal; the producer gives more than he receives.”
Now, value being necessarily based upon utility, it follows that every useless product is necessarily valueless,—that it cannot be exchanged; and, consequently, that it cannot be given in payment for productive services.
Then, though production may equal consumption, it never can exceed it; for there is no real production save where there is a production of utility, and there is no utility save where there is a possibility of consumption. Thus, so much of every product as is rendered by excessive abundance inconsumable, becomes useless, valueless, unexchangeable,—consequently, unfit to be given in payment for any thing whatever, and is no longer a product.
Consumption, on the other hand, to be legitimate,—to be true consumption,—must be reproductive of utility; for, if it is unproductive, the products which it destroys are cancelled values—things produced at a pure loss; a state of things
