history, and makes the just and free
exchange of products and the circulation of values the starting-point
for the determination of values, and thereby also the foundation of
his realm of justice, freedom, and equality, in which economic forces
have free play.

If values circulate themselves, then too they determine themselves,
and thus only is there a just bargain; profit is impossible, so too is
the accumulation of capital and property. Since all have equal share
in production as in consumption, commodities will always be where they
are needed, and they will always be needed where they exist; supply
and demand will equal one another, value in use and value in exchange
will be the same, value is determined, and the circle (which is in
any case a vicious circle) is completed. Land, like all the means of
labour, is a collective possession. Every one will enjoy the full
results of his labour, but no one will be able to heap up riches
because profit in any form is impossible. Men will collect through
their own free choice in productive groups, which again will be in
direct intercourse one with another, and will exchange their products
as may be required, without profit. Common interests will be
determined by Boards of Experts, who will be chosen by the members of
these groups by means of universal suffrage. The total of all these
boards, which are completely autonomous, forms the only existing and
only possible administration. Governments become superfluous, since
the economic life must entirely absorb political life. And since there
will be no property and no distinction of rich and poor, there will
also be no rule of one man over another, there will be no criminals,
judicial and civil power, militarism and bureaucracy become
superfluous and disappear of themselves. In spite of anarchy (_i. e._,
no government), or rather because of it, the greatest, the only order
will prevail.

In fact, if anything ever deserved the name ideal it is this reform of
society sketched by Proudhon, to which he himself has given the name
"Mutualism." He did not suspect or notice that he had done nothing
more than express the abstract formula of existing relationships, the
most general conception of the liberal scheme of economics. Things
happen in our own world just as Proudhon wished in his kingdom of the
future, only there are a few insignificant factors of friction,
extensions of co-efficients, and so on, which he, if he had been
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