Proudhon, Pierre Joseph. System of Economical Contradictions: or, the Philosophy of Misery Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library Chapter 3 CHAPTER III. ECONOMIC EVOLUTIONS. -- FIRST PERIOD. -- THE DIVISION OF LABOR. The fundamental idea, the dominant category, of political economy is VALUE. Value reaches its positive determination by a series of oscillations between supply and demand. Consequently, value appears successively under three aspects: useful value, exchangeable value, and synthetic, or social, value, which is true value. The first term gives birth to the second in contradiction to it, and the two together, absorbing each other in reciprocal penetration, produce the third: so that the contradiction or antagonism of ideas appears as the point of departure of all economic science, allowing us to...
An Inquiry into the Principle of Right and of GovernmentFirst Memoir Adversus hostem æterna auctertas esto. Against the enemy, revendication is eternal. Law of the twelve tables. Chapter I. Method Pursued In This Work. — The Idea Of A Revolution. If I were asked to answer the following question: What is slavery? and I should answer in one word, It is murder, my meaning would be understood at once. No extended argument would be required to show that the power to take from a man his thought, his will, his personality, is a power of life and death; and that to enthralled a man is to kill him. Why, then, to this other question: What is property! may I not likewise answer, It is robbery, without the certainty of being misunderstood; the second proposition being no other than a transformation of the first? I undertake to discuss the vital principle of our government and our institution...