d so on _consume less than they produce_,--because they are
_compelled_ to sell most of the produce of their labour and to be
satisfied with but a small portion of it.

Let us also observe that if the needs of the individual are taken as the
starting-point of our political economy, we cannot fail to reach
Communism, an organization which enables us to satisfy all needs in the
most thorough and economical way. While if we start from our present
method of production, and aim at gain and surplus value, without asking
whether our production corresponds to the satisfaction of needs, we
necessarily arrive at Capitalism, or at most at Collectivism--both being
but two different forms of the present wages' system.

In fact, when we consider the needs of the individual and of society,
and the means which man has resorted to in order to satisfy them during
his varied phases of development, we see at once the necessity of
systematizing our efforts, instead of producing haphazard as we do
nowadays. It becomes evident that the appropriation by a few of all
riches not consumed, and transmitted from one generation to another, is
not in the general interest. And we see as a fact that owing to these
methods the needs of three-quarters of society are _not_ satisfied, so
that the present waste of human strength in useless things is only the
more criminal.

We discover, moreover, that the most advantageous use of all commodities
would be, for each of them, to go, first, for satisfying those needs
which are the most pressing: that, in other words, the so-called "value
in use" of a commodity does not depend on a simple whim, as has often
been affirmed, but on the satisfaction it brings to _real_ needs.

Communism--that is to say, an organization which would correspond to a
view of Consumption, Production, and Exchange, taken as a
whole--therefore becomes the logical consequence of such a comprehension
of things--the only one, in our opinion, that is really scientific.

A society that will satisfy the needs of all, and which will know how to
organize production to answer to this aim will also have to make a clean
sweep of several prejudices concerning industry, and first of all the
theory often preached by economists--_The Division of Labour_
theory--which we are going to discuss in the next chapter.

CHAPTER XV

THE DIVISION OF LABOUR

Political Economy has always confined itself to stating facts occurring
in society, and jus