eeks for a solution by saying that the more capable workman, who
performs his day's work in six hours, should never have the right to
usurp the day's work of a less capable labourer, under the pretext of
greater strength and activity, and thus rob him of work and bread; it
is advantage enough derived from his greater capacities that, by this
shortening of his time of labour, he has greater opportunity to work
for his own personal education and culture, or to enjoy himself, and
so on. But Proudhon must be driven even from this last corner of
refuge by the question, What will take place if anyone will perform
only the half of his day's work? Proudhon says: "That is all right;
obviously half of his wages are sufficient for that man. What has he
to complain of if he is rewarded according to the work which he has
performed? and what does it matter to others? In this sense it is
right and proper to apply the text, 'to each according to his work';
that is the law of equality."[2]

[2] _Qu'est-ce que la Propriete?_ p. 102.

But this is to retract all along the line. Proudhon, who assumes the
equality of all working days, and has made it the basis of his theory
of value, must now admit the dependence of wages upon the performance
of work, and admit also, although reluctantly, the statement of St.
Simon, "to each according to his work," which he had set out to
refute. He ought to have gone still farther and said: "If anyone will
not do any work, what happens then? Obviously the man needs no wages;
why should the others then trouble about it?--it is the law of
equality." But what becomes then of the equality to which work was
said to lead? Further, what about the impossibility of proving the
right of property through work? All Proudhon's arguments in proof of
the impossibility of property are mere dialectic sword-play which
hardly anyone takes seriously. Proudhon does not even criticise actual
circumstances, but proves that, following his ideal assumptions (which
in any case exclude property), property is impossible.

The supposed result of his book he sums up in the Hegelian formula:
"Communism, the first form and the final destiny of society, is the
first terminus of social development, the thesis; property, the
contradictory opposite to communism, forms the second terminus, the
antithesis; it remains for us to determine the third terminus, the
synthesis, and then we have the required solution. The synthesis
results neces