“Every upward movement in wages can have no other effect than a rise in the price of corn, wine, etc., that is, the effect of a dearth. For what are wages ? They are the cost price of corn, etc. ; they are the integrant price of everything. We may go even further : wages are the proportion of the elements composing wealth and consumed reproductively every day by the mass of the workers. Now, to double wages ... is to attribute to each one of the producers a greater share than his product, which is contradictory, and if the rise extends only to a small number of industries, it brings a general disturbance in exchange ; in a word, a dearth....
“It is impossible, I declare, for strikes followed by an increase in wages not to culminate in a general rise in prices : this is as certain as that two and two make four.”
“Every upward movement in wages can have no other effect than a rise in the price of corn, wine, etc., that is, the effect of a dearth. For what are wages ? They are the cost price of corn, etc. ; they are the integrant price of everything. We may go even further : wages are the proportion of the elements composing wealth and consumed reproductively every day by the mass of the workers. Now, to double wages ... is to attribute to each one of the producers a greater share than his product, which is contradictory, and if the rise extends only to a small number of industries, it brings a general disturbance in exchange ; in a word, a dearth....
“It is impossible, I declare, for strikes followed by an increase in wages not to culminate in a general rise in prices : this is as certain as that two and two make four.”
(Proudhon, Vol. I, pp. 110 and 111)