our," says Marx
in his celebrated polemic against Proudhon.[1] "Ricardo discovered
this error by clearly proving the difference between these two modes
of measurement. Proudhon, however, goes even farther than the error of
Adam Smith, by identifying two things which Smith has only brought
into juxtaposition. To find the right proportion according to which
the labourers should have their share in the products of their labour,
or, in other words, to determine the relative value of labour,
Proudhon seeks some measure for the relative value of commodities. To
determine the measure for the relative value of commodities he cannot
invent anything better than to give us as an equivalent for a certain
quantity of work, the total of the products made by it; which leaves
us to suppose that the whole of society consists of nothing but
labourers, who receive as wages what they themselves produce. In the
second place, he maintains the equal value of the working days of
different labourers as an actual fact; in a word, he seeks the measure
for the relative value of commodities in order to discover the equal
payment of labourers, and assumes the equality of payment as a settled
fact, in order to proceed to search for the relative value of
commodities."

[1] _Das Elend der Philosophie: An Answer to Proudhon's
Philosophie des Elends._ Stuttgart, 1892 (German ed.).

If we turn back to the question, What is property? we find this
confusion of ideas is answerable for his unsuccessful attempt to prove
that labour must create equality and annihilate property. Here, too,
the equality of the working days is assumed, and therefore the
equality of wages is demanded. But, then, immediately this working day
is changed into his work done in a day (_tache sociale journaliere_).
"Let us assume," says he, "that this social day's work amounts to the
cultivation or weeding or harvesting of two square decametres, and the
mean average of all the time necessary for these amounts to seven
hours. One labourer will finish it in six hours; another in eight
hours; the majority will work seven hours; but so long as each
performs the amount of work required of him, he deserves the same
wages as all the others, however long he may have worked at it." Here
time of work has imperceptibly changed into quantity of work, and
wages are given, not according to the measure of equal working times
but according to the measure of equal performances. Proudhon here
s