Let us consider, in fact, what takes place, from the point of
view of distribution, in the four great divisions of collective
labor,-- EXTRACTION,[21] MANUFACTURES, COMMERCE, AGRICULTURE.
Each producer brings to market a real product whose quantity can
be measured, whose quality can be estimated, whose price can be
debated, and, finally, whose value can be discounted, either in
other services or merchandise, or else in money. In all these
industries distribution, therefore, is nothing but the mutual
exchange of products according to the law of proportionality of
values.
[21] Hunting, fishing, mining,--in short, the gathering of all
natural products.--Translator.
Nothing like this takes place with the functionaries called
PUBLIC. These obtain their right to subsistence, not by the
production of real utilities, but by the very state of
unproductivity in which, by no fault of their own, they are kept.
For them the law of proportionality is inverted: while social
wealth is formed and increased in the direct ratio of the
quantity, variety, and proportion of the effective products
furnished by the four great industrial categories, the
development of this same wealth, the perfecting of social order,
suppose, on the contrary, so far as the personnel of police is
concerned, a progressive and indefinite reduction.
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