[lbo-talk] waiting for the quantitative to turn into the qualitative

[Julio Huato]

"It is by no means self-evident that this character of direct and
universal exchangeability is, so to speak, a polar one, and as
intimately connected with its opposite pole, the absence of direct
exchangeability, as the positive pole of the magnet is with its
negative counterpart. It may therefore be imagined that all
commodities can simultaneously have this character impressed upon
them, just as it can be imagined that all Catholics can be popes
together. It is, of course, highly desirable in the eyes of the petit
bourgeois, for whom the production of commodities is the nec plus
ultra of human freedom and individual independence, that the
inconveniences resulting from this character of commodities not being
directly exchangeable, should be removed. Proudhon's socialism is a
working out of this Philistine Utopia, a form of socialism which, as I
have elsewhere shown, does not possess even the merit of originality.
Long before his time, the task was attempted with much better success
by Gray, Bray, and others. But, for all that, wisdom of this kind
flourishes even now in certain circles under the name of "science."
Never has any school played more tricks with the word science, than
that of Proudhon, for "wo Begriffe fehlen, Da stellt zur rechten Zeit
ein Wort sich ein." ["Where thoughts are absent, Words are brought in
as convenient replacements," Goethe's, Faust, See Proudhon's
Philosophy of Poverty]"

Marx, Capital, ch. 1, footnote 26