I. If, with the economists, we consider the laborer as a living machine,
we must regard the wages paid to him as the amount necessary to support
this machine, and keep it in repair. The head of a manufacturing
establishment--who employs laborers at three, five, ten, and
fifteen francs per day, and who charges twenty francs for his
superintendence--does not regard his disbursements as losses, because
he knows they will return to him in the form of products. Consequently,
LABOR and REPRODUCTIVE CONSUMPTION are identical.

What is the proprietor? He is a machine which does not work; or, which
working for its own pleasure, and only when it sees fit, produces
nothing.

What is it to consume as a proprietor? It is to consume without
working, to consume without reproducing. For, once more, that which the
proprietor consumes as a laborer comes back to him; he does not give his
labor in exchange for his property, since, if he did, he would thereby
cease to be a proprietor. In consuming as a laborer, the proprietor
gains, or at least does not lose, since he recovers that which he
consumes; in consuming as a proprietor, he impoverishes himself. To
enjoy property, then, it is necessary to destroy it; to be a real
proprietor, one must cease to be a proprietor.

The laborer who consumes his wages is a machine which destroys and
reproduces; the proprietor who consumes his income is a bottomless
gulf,--sand which we water, a stone which we sow. So true is this,
that the proprietor--neither wishing nor knowing how to produce, and
perceiving that as fast as he uses his property he destroys it for
ever--has taken the precaution to make some one produce in his place.
That is what political economy, speaking in the name of eternal justice,
calls PRODUCING BY HIS CAPITAL,--PRODUCING BY HIS TOOLS. And that is
what ought to be called PRODUCING BY A SLAVE--PRODUCING AS A THIEF AND
AS A TYRANT. He, the proprietor, produce!... The robber might say, as
well: "I produce."

The consumption of the proprietor has been styled luxury, in opposition
to USEFUL consumption. From what has just been said, we see that great
luxury can prevail in a nation which is not rich,--that poverty even
increases with luxury, and vice versa. The economists (so much credit
must be given them, at least) have caused such a horror of luxury,
that to-day a very large number of proprietors--not to say almost
all--ashamed of their idleness--labor, economize, and capitali