Market imperfections

The above-described mechanism only works if the produced commodities and services are available at the time and place, where they generate the greatest profit. Over long periods of time, this condition was not fulfilled because markets were small and insu­lated.

In the present state of things the free worker is still generally obliged to act both... as a pro­ducer and a merchant of labour. While he has the full capacity to be a producer, he has neither time, nor resources, nor the necessary information to be a successful merchant. Like all the producers... he needs some intermediary to sell his commodity.

Some entrepreneurs, in order to reduce the costs of hiring and managing their person­nel, use the services of “marchandeurs” who recruit workers and re-sell their labour. The intervention of such intermediaries was seen to involve the exploitation of workers, and was forbidden by law on 2 March 1848. However, if these intermediaries did not fulfil their task well, it is because they acted on too small a scale. Molinari proposes the formation of powerful societies of bargaining, which would buy and pay for the services of the workers and supervise their labour.

The extension of the markets for products and capital generated the creation of com­modity and stock exchanges, which circulated the information needed by merchants and bankers. The extension of the labour market would have had the same effect. The intermediaries - the job placement offices and the emigration corporations - would wish to know on a daily basis the situation prevailing on local markets. Labour exchanges would provide this information. Molinari (1893: 162) stresses that this kind of institu­tion aimed at mobilizing labour “would be spontaneously created and would develop by itself as soon as the spirit of enterprise and capitals would find an interest in its creation, that is, as soon as it will bring them a profit. It would be enough to laissez-faire”. As Benkemoune (2008: 258) stresses, Molinari’s aim is to show that civil society, left to its own devices, can solve the problem of the deficiency of information and that the extended market would appear spontaneously without any necessity of a state intervention.