uent second edition, the Permanent
Exhibition Company, was to be founded (in Proudhon's Hegelian method
of expression) upon the identity of the shareholders and their
clients. The producers who had a share in the People's Bank were to
deliver their products to the bank, which would control and determine
the prices of those commodities by assessors, the prices being
determined only with reference to the time of labour spent upon them
and the necessary expenses of production; profit was forbidden since
the bank was not to operate upon its own account. The producer
received upon delivery of his goods "exchange bonds," in return for
which he then could take from the bank other commodities. As the bank
also granted its customers loans without charging interest, money and
interest would become unnecessary, trade would gradually be carried on
only by means of the bonds of the bank, and thus would be brought
about the harmony of social intercourse of which Proudhon dreamed.

The Permanent Exhibition Company was to be a new edition of the
People's Bank, perfected and enlarged in every direction. Since the
shareholders of this company consisted of producers, and their purpose
was above all the sale and interchange of products, so therefore the
subscription for the formation of the capital was not to be, as in the
case of other companies, merely in money, but was to be nine-tenths in
products, which were to be sold by the company, and the receipts of
the sale were then to be credited to the shareholders. As the State
was to become surety for the interest on these shares, Proudhon
thought that these must become actual money, representing rights to
dividend, which could only lose their value by the destruction of the
company's depot for goods. Against the goods which were deposited with
it or the sale of which it undertook, as well as against the bills
which were given to it to discount, the company was to issue, together
with the cash which it had at disposal, general bonds of exchange (_la
bons generaux d'echange_) which would represent the goods stored in it
and realised by it, and should give the claim to an equal value in
goods which the holder of the bond could take from the storehouses as
he wished. These bonds were to be the circulating money of the
company, and were to be accepted by it instead of cash payments in all
transactions with goods or with bills. The circulating paper of the
company, held by it at par, owing to th