ty.

What have we shown so far? Things so simple that really they seem
silly:--

That, as the traveller does not appropriate the route which he
traverses, so the farmer does not appropriate the field which he sows;

That if, nevertheless, by reason of his industry, a laborer may
appropriate the material which he employs, every employer of material
becomes, by the same title, a proprietor;

That all capital, whether material or mental, being the result of
collective labor, is, in consequence, collective property;

That the strong have no right to encroach upon the labor of the weak,
nor the shrewd to take advantage of the credulity of the simple;

Finally, that no one can be forced to buy that which he does not want,
still less to pay for that which he has not bought; and, consequently,
that the exchangeable value of a product, being measured neither by the
opinion of the buyer nor that of the seller, but by the amount of time
and outlay which it has cost, the property of each always remains the
same.

Are not these very simple truths? Well, as simple as they seem to you,
reader, you shall yet see others which surpass them in dullness and
simplicity. For our course is the reverse of that of the geometricians:
with them, the farther they advance, the more difficult their problems
become; we, on the contrary, after having commenced with the most
abstruse propositions, shall end with the axioms.

But I must close this chapter with an exposition of one of those
startling truths which never have been dreamed of by legists or
economists.

% 8.--That, from the Stand-point of Justice, Labor destroys Property.

This proposition is the logical result of the two preceding sections,
which we have just summed up.

The isolated man can supply but a very small portion of his wants; all
his power lies in association, and in the intelligent combination of
universal effort. The division and co-operation of labor multiply the
quantity and the variety of products; the individuality of functions
improves their quality.

There is not a man, then, but lives upon the products of several
thousand different industries; not a laborer but receives from society
at large the things which he consumes, and, with these, the power to
reproduce. Who, indeed, would venture the assertion, "I produce, by
my own effort, all that I consume; I need the aid of no one else"?
The farmer, whom the early economists regarded as the only real
produ