Key Arguments

• He explains that if a workingman earns "an average of three francs per day, his employer (in order to gain anything beyond his own salary, if only interest on his capital) must sell the day’s labor of his employee, in the form of merchandise, for more than three francs. The workingman cannot, then, repurchase that which he has produced for his master."
• He generalizes: "It is thus with all trades whatsoever. The tailor, the hatter, the cabinetmaker, the blacksmith, the tanner, the mason, the jeweller, the printer, the clerk, etc., even to the farmer and wine-grower, cannot repurchase their products; since, producing for a master who in one form or another makes a profit, they are obliged to pay more for their own labor than they get for it."
• On the national scale, he estimates that "In France, twenty millions of laborers, engaged in all the branches of science, art, and industry, produce everything which is useful to man. Their annual wages amount, it is estimated, to twenty thousand millions;"
• Yet "in consequence of the right of property, and the multifarious forms of increase, premiums, tithes, interests, fines, profits, farm-rents, house-rents, revenues, emoluments of every nature and description, their products are estimated by the proprietors and employers at twenty-five thousand millions."
• He infers that "the laborers, who are obliged to repurchase these products in order to live, must either pay five for that which they produced for four, or fast one day in five." and issues a challenge: "If there is an economist in France able to show that this calculation is false, I summon him to appear;" staking his anti‑property argument on this quantitative claim.

Source Quotes

Here details become necessary. If the workingman receives for his labor an average of three francs per day, his employer (in order to gain anything beyond his own salary, if only interest on his capital) must sell the day’s labor of his employee, in the form of merchandise, for more than three francs. The workingman cannot, then, repurchase that which he has produced for his master. It is thus with all trades whatsoever.

The workingman cannot, then, repurchase that which he has produced for his master. It is thus with all trades whatsoever. The tailor, the hatter, the cabinetmaker, the blacksmith, the tanner, the mason, the jeweller, the printer, the clerk, etc., even to the farmer and wine-grower, cannot repurchase their products; since, producing for a master who in one form or another makes a profit, they are obliged to pay more for their own labor than they get for it. In France, twenty millions of laborers, engaged in all the branches of science, art, and industry, produce everything which is useful to man.

In France, twenty millions of laborers, engaged in all the branches of science, art, and industry, produce everything which is useful to man. Their annual wages amount, it is estimated, to twenty thousand millions; but, in consequence of the right of property, and the multifarious forms of increase, premiums, tithes, interests, fines, profits, farm-rents, house-rents, revenues, emoluments of every nature and description, their products are estimated by the proprietors and employers at twenty-five thousand millions. What does that signify?

What does that signify? That the laborers, who are obliged to repurchase these products in order to live, must either pay five for that which they produced for four, or fast one day in five. If there is an economist in France able to show that this calculation is false, I summon him to appear; and I promise to retract all that I have wrongfully and wickedly uttered in my attacks upon property.

That the laborers, who are obliged to repurchase these products in order to live, must either pay five for that which they produced for four, or fast one day in five. If there is an economist in France able to show that this calculation is false, I summon him to appear; and I promise to retract all that I have wrongfully and wickedly uttered in my attacks upon property. Let us now look at the results of this profit.

Key Concepts

• If the workingman receives for his labor an average of three francs per day, his employer (in order to gain anything beyond his own salary, if only interest on his capital) must sell the day’s labor of his employee, in the form of merchandise, for more than three francs. The workingman cannot, then, repurchase that which he has produced for his master.
• It is thus with all trades whatsoever. The tailor, the hatter, the cabinetmaker, the blacksmith, the tanner, the mason, the jeweller, the printer, the clerk, etc., even to the farmer and wine-grower, cannot repurchase their products;
• their annual wages amount, it is estimated, to twenty thousand millions;
• their products are estimated by the proprietors and employers at twenty-five thousand millions.
• must either pay five for that which they produced for four, or fast one day in five.
• If there is an economist in France able to show that this calculation is false, I summon him to appear;

Context

Later part of the Fifth Proposition, where Proudhon moves from stylized examples to aggregate national figures in order to show that profit and interest systematically prevent workers from consuming the full value of their own production.