Now, here there is a difference between economic science and
chemistry. The chemists, who have discovered by experience such
beautiful proportions, know no more of their how or why than of
the force which governs them. Social economy, on the contrary,
to which no a posteriori investigation could reveal directly the
law of proportionality of values, can grasp it in the very force
which produces it, and which it is time to announce.
This force, which Adam Smith has glorified so eloquently, and
which his successors have misconceived (making privilege its
equal),--this force is LABOR. Labor differs in quantity and
quality with the producer; in this respect it is like all the
great principles of Nature and the most general laws, simple in
their action and formula, but infinitely modified by a multitude
of special causes, and manifesting themselves under an
innumerable variety of forms. It is labor, labor alone, that
produces all the elements of wealth, and that combines them to
their last molecules according to a law of variable, but certain,
proportionality.
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