or else some preparatory step must be discovered and made use of -- some movement partaking partly of the present and partly of the desired system -- some intermediate resting place, to which society may go with all its faults and its follies, and from which it may move forward, imbued with those qualities and attributes without which the system of community and equality cannot as such have existence."(Bray, p.134)
"The whole movement would require only co-operation in its ******st form.... Cost of production would in every instance determine value; and equal values would always exchange for equal values. If one person worked a whole week, and another worked only half a week, the first would receive double the remuneration of the last; but this extra pay of the one would not be at the expense of the other, nor would the loss incurred by the last man fall in any way upon the first. Each person would exchange the wages he individually received for commodities of the same value as his respective wages; and in no case could the gain of one man or one trade be a loss to another man or another trade. The labor of every individual would alone determined his gains of his losses....
"... By means of general and local boards of trade... the quantitities of the various commodities required for consumption -- the relative value of each in regard to each other -- the number of hands required in various trades and descriptions of labor -- and all other matters connected with production and distribution, could in a short time be as easily determined for a nation as for an individual company under the present arrangements....
"As individuals compose families, and families towns, under the existing system, so likewise would they after the joint-stock change had been effected. The present distribution of people in towns and villages, bad as it is, would not be directly interfered with....
"Under this joint-stock system, the same as under that now existing, every individual would be at liberty to accumulate as much as he pleased, and to enjoy such accumulations when and where he might think proper....
"The great productive section of the community... is divided into an indefinite number of smaller sections, all working, producing and exchanging their products on a footing of the most perfect equality....
"And the joint-stock modification (which is nothing but a concession to present-day society in order to obtain communism), by being so constituted as to admit of individual property in productions in connection with a common property in productive powers -- ****** every individual dependent on his own exertions, and at the same time allowing him an equal participation in every advantage afforded by nature and art -- is fitted to take society as it is, and to prepare the way for other and better changes."(Bray, pp.158, 160, 162, 168 and 194)
We now only need to reply in a few words to Mr. Bray who without us and in spite of us had managed to supplant M. Proudhon, except that Mr. Bray, far from claiming the last word on behalf of humanity, proposes merely measures which he think good for a period of transition between existing society and a community regime.
One hour of Peter's labor exchanges for one hour of Paul's labor.
That is Mr. Bray's fundamental axiom.
Let us suppose Peter has 12 hours' labor before him, and Paul only six. Peter will consequently have six hours' labor left over. What will he do with these six hours' labor?
Either he will do nothing with them -- in which case he will have worked six hours for nothing; or else he will remain idle for another six hours to get even; or else, as a last resource, he will give these six hours' labor, which he has no use for, to Paul into the bargain.
What in the end will Peter have earned more than Paul? Some hours of labor? No! He will have gained only hours of leisure; he will be forced to play the loafer for six hours. And in order that this new right to loaf might be not only relished but sought after in the new society, this society would have to find in idleness its highest bliss, and to look upon labor as a heavy shackle from which it must break free at all costs.
