34 
THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
same fact reappears. For part of the day the workman works 
to obtain the equivalent of his subsistence, viz. his wages, and 
during the remaining time for the capitalist. The fact stated by 
Marx is, then, quite true ; but it is not by economic subtleties 
about the “ surplus value ” that an attack is to be made on a 
partition of produce which results from the laws of the state 
and from the whole existing social organization. You can rob 
a man of his property, but you will never induce him to give 
up the enjoyment of it without receiving in exchange either 
services, or products, or money. If, like Proudhon, you wish 
that the producer were able to purchase his product, or to keep 
the whole of it, make him a capitalist. Already in France, and 
to a greater extent in Switzerland, unlike the case in England, 
a great number of men, possessing land and instruments of 
labour, can thus sit under their own vine and keep for them 
selves all the fruits of their labour, won from a soil which owes 
nothing to anybody. Advance this movement by spreading 
education and the habit of thrift, and the time will come when 
all will have a share in property, either landed or industrial, 
and when all will be freed from the tax paid to capital, because 
the capital will be their own. 
Rent is a natural fact and interest a necessary one. You 
cannot therefore abolish them, but the labourer, by acquiring 
ownership, can claim them for himself. 
In the Middle Ages, in the trade-guilds, the artisan working 
with his own hands was owner of the trade-capital, the instru 
ments of his labour. Accordingly, he retained the whole 
produce. Some similar organization should be revived, but 
under a different juridical form. 
The fundamental error of Marx lies in the idea he con 
ceives of value, which, according to him, is always in propor 
tion to labour. He has certainly made the theory of Smith 
and Ricardo much more plausible by saying that the value 
of an article depends on the amount of labour “ socially 
necessary ” to produce it. Thus, a chair has cost you three 
days’ labour ; but, on the average, it can be made in two days. 
It will therefore be worth only the equivalent of two days’ 
labour. Even thus amended, the idea is false. We must