lise the
republican motto: _Liberty_, _Equality_, _Fraternity_, while leaving it
to our intelligence to bring about the realisation of this. Now, what is
the formula of this political and liberal guarantee? At present
universal suffrage; later on free contract.... Economic and social
reform through the mutual guarantee of credit; political reform through
the inter-action of individual liberties; such is the programme of the
"_Voix du Peuple_."[21] We may add to this that it is not very difficult
to write the "biography" of this programme.

In a society of producers of commodities, the exchange of commodities is
carried out according to the labour socially necessary for their
production. Labour is the source and the measure of their
exchange-value. Nothing could seem more "just" than this to any man
imbued with the ideas engendered by a society of producers of
commodities. Unfortunately this "justice" is no more "eternal" than
anything else here below. The development of the production of
commodities necessarily brings in its train the transformation of the
greater part of society into proletarians, possessing nothing but their
labour-power, and of the other part into capitalists, who, buying this
power, the only commodity of the proletarians, turn it into a source of
wealth for themselves. In working for the capitalists the proletarian
produces the income of his exploiter, at the same time as his own
poverty, his own social subjection. Is not this sufficiently unjust? The
partisan of the rights of the producer of commodities deplores the lot
of the proletarians; he thunders against capital. But at the same time
he thunders against the revolutionary tendencies of the proletarians who
speak of expropriating the exploiter and of a communistic organisation
of production. Communism is unjust, it is the most odious tyranny. What
wants organising is not _production_ but _exchange_, he assures us. But
how organise exchange? That is easy enough, and what is daily going on
before our eyes may serve to show us the way. Labour is the source and
the measure of the _value_ of commodities. But is the _price_ of
commodities always determined by their value? Do not prices continually
vary according to the rarity or abundance of these commodities? The
value of a commodity and its price are two different things; and this is
the misfortune, the great misfortune of all of us poor, honest folk, who
only want justice, and only ask for our own