. To solve the social
question, therefore we must put a stop to the _arbitrariness of prices_,
and to the anomaly of value (Proudhon's own expressions). And in order
to do this we must "constitute" value; _i.e._, see that every producer
shall always, in exchange for his commodity, receive exactly what it
costs. Then will private property not only cease to be theft, it will
become the most adequate expression of justice. To constitute value is
to constitute small private property, and small private property once
constituted, everything will be justice and happiness in a world now so
full of misery and injustice. And it is no good for proletarians to
object, they have no means of production: by guaranteeing themselves
_credit gratis_, all who want to work will, as by the touch of a magic
wand, have everything necessary for production.

Small property and small parcelled-out production, its economic basis,
was always the dream of Proudhon. The huge modern mechanical workshop
always inspired him with profound aversion. He says that labour, like
love, flies from society. No doubt there are some industries--Proudhon
instances railways--in which _association_ is essential. In these, the
isolated producer must make way for "companies of workers." But the
exception only proves the rule.[22] Small private property must be the
basis of "social organization."

Small private property is tending to disappear. The desire not merely to
preserve it, but to transform it into the basis of a new social
organisation is extreme conservatism. The desire at the same time to put
an end to "the exploitation of man by man," to the wage-system, is
assuredly to combine with the most conservative the most radical
aspirations.

We have no desire here to criticise this petty bourgeois Utopia. This
criticism has already been undertaken by a master hand in the works of
Marx: "La Misere de la Philosophie," and "Zur Kritik der Politischen
Oekonomie." We will only observe the following:--

The only bond that unites the producers of commodities upon the domain
of economics is exchange. From the juridical point of view, exchange
appears as the relation between two wills. The relation of these two
wills is expressed in the "contract." The production of commodities duly
"constituted" is therefore the reign of "absolute" individual liberty.
By finding myself bound through a contract that obliges me to do such
and such a thing, I do not renounce my liberty.